Shuttlecrash
by Manuuk7
Summary: The shuttle Shran and T'Pol were on has crashed on a distant asteroid and T'Pol is seriously wounded. Can Shran let go of his preconceptions and keep her alive while they wait for Enterprise? How will Archer and the crew manage the recovery without a transporter? This is a general story with a little bit of action. Ensemble: Travis, Hoshi, Reed, Phlox, Hess and two crew members.
1. Chapter 1

Day One

Thick billows of black smoke obscured the inside of the small craft. The smoke rolled over the sensors of the emergency life support system, triggering the inside filter exhaust system. The network of ducts in the ship's envelope sprang into action, sucking the smoke away to the matter recyclers, and the recyclers stripped the soot and all particulates matter from the air and returned clean breathable air to the cabin. As air was slowly being filtered, the black haze that had settled throughout the cabin became more transparent, Shapes started to take form sprawled haphazardly throughout the compartment. One of those shapes started moving.

Shran groaned as he came to. That had been some ride down. The gravitational shear had caught them unprepared and it had felt like the shuttle was being thrown about at lightyear speeds, then violently suctioned into an endless zero-G vortex that left his stomach at one end and his feet at the other, before the shuttle hit a wall. Of sorts. There was no wall in space, but whatever it was the shuttle had encountered had abruptly stopped its fall. He knew it didn't make sense to talk of fall in the vacuum of space, but he would go to his dying bed telling people the shuttle had been falling.

If the shuttle had been falling, the people inside it had been falling equally as fast. And where the shuttle encountered the hard surface that had stopped its downward motion, the bodies inside it encountered the steel walls of the shuttle. It was not hard to say who had fared worse. The shuttle was a solid object meeting another solid object and its occupants were soft bodies encountering a solid surface.

Fortunately, Shran's fall as the shuttle plunged the last hundred yards or so had been cushioned, as he could tell from the softly yielding cushion under his head. That was his head. Every other part of his body hurt like damnation. He pushed himself off the floor, using the seat next to him to lift himself to a standing position. He gingerly stretched his limbs, one after the other, then touched his antennae. Nothing broken, nothing twisted. Bruises were the only thing stiffening his limbs. And these were deep, monstrous-size bruises, he could tell.

The shuttle was leaning to one side where the crash had dropped it. Shran quickly looked at the front screen, noted with relief that there was no crack, chastized himself for the unnecessary check. If there had been a crack in the screen, their bodies would already be floating in the coldness of space and he would have had no clue. But he did catch sight of the surface of the asteroid the shuttle seemed to have face-planted itself onto. Not a pretty sight, all a-kilter as it was.

His attention came back to the inside of the shuttlecraft, where, more importantly, there were the four aliens and two Andorians. Or there had been four aliens and two Andorians before space threw them on one heck of a roller coaster ride. There were bodies on the shuttlecraft's floor, and he hobbled to the nearest one. It was one of the MACO's from the Enterprise that were accompanying him and T'Pol in their diplomatic mission. Shran was not very well versed in human physiology, but he didn't think it was normal for pink-skins to look grey-white. He turned the MACO on his back. The head lolled impossibly. He did not need knowledge of human biology to tell a broken neck.

Shran sighed, and staggered to the next body, fighting his fast-tightening muscles. That one was still seated, giving him hope that it had survived the crash, even though the pink skin was no longer pink. He could see that the safety restraint was still holding him to his seat. And realized that the safety belt on three other seats had not resisted the gravitational stress of the fall and had all snapped. That made Shran angry. Whoever was responsible for installing subpar material on the shuttlecraft was criminal.

He couldn't help but reflect the pink skins were rank amateurs when it came to space-faring. If they didn't have redeeming Andorian-like qualities of cunning and perseverance, they would have been dead many times over from such poorly supplied spaceships. And that was not counting the deplorable fragility of the hull of the Enterprise in the Expanse.

Shran leaned towards the seated man, coming to within inches of his face, trying to tell if he was alive. The seated figure was statue-like and Shran could not detect any breathing. There was no warmth emanating from the skin. He inclined his head to one side, pensively looking at the human. "Hey", he shook the man's shoulder, trying for a sign of life. The noise sounded incongruous in the shuttle, perhaps because it seemed so loud in contrast to the surrounding silence. The human didn't move. Shran could not figure out how he had been hurt, but he was pretty certain it was no longer alive. So both MACO's were dead. That left the shuttle pilot and Shran's aide.

Shran staggered to the front of the cabin, where the pilot and his aide had been seated. He avoided looking out the screen at the asteroid, afraid that somehow the shuttle would slide off and resume its fall. He knew it wasn't logical, what a hated word, but the shuttle had been falling. All the deities in the universe were witness to that.

The pilot was still strapped in his seat, lucky for her, but her head leaned over the controls in a way that didn't bode well. Shran took a sharp breath when he leaned her back into her seat. The back and forth of the shuttle had been so violent that the restraints had pretty much sawed her into quarters. She might have been luckier if they had snapped. She may be just as dead, but perhaps of a more pleasant death.

He turned to his aide, who was splayed against the front monitor in a most awkward position, both antennae broken, his skin already turning a translucent share of green. Shran didn't need to confirm he was dead. He turned back towards the main cabin, trying to gather his thoughts. Something was missing.

The Vulcan! The fog in his brain was clearing along with the smoke in the cabin. He looked to where she had been seated, but she was no longer there, the seat was empty. Shran noticed the broken restraints, cursed once more under his breath. Could it be that he was the only one left alive on this forsaken craft?

He hobbled to the seat where she had been, right next to him, the two of them official delegates to show the new contacts how the Federation of Planets united species of all kinds. But both center seats were empty, the tatters of the safety restraints the only sign they had been in use. Shran's gaze scanned the center section of the cabin, starting from the highest side of the slanted shuttle. He saw the figure crammed into the lowest point, where the sides of the shuttle had buckled at an angle, and rushed to it before the pain radiating throughout his legs brought him back to a stiff walk.

As he staggered forward, a sick feeling grew in him as the realization dawned that she was the soft yielding cushion that had been under his head. Did it kill her? She was wedged between her seat and the wall, unmoving. Shran kneeled awkwardly next to her, gritting his teeth against the pain of bruised tissue. The petite Vulcan was dressed in her diplomatic robes, and no sign of injury was visible. He stopped, fearing she too was dead, trying to remember Vulcan anatomy and how to tell if she was. A sudden shallow rise of her chest surprised him. He wasn't sure if he had seen it or imagined it, and he waited. The shallow rise happened again, and then he knew she was still breathing.

Shran started talking to her, hopeful that it would be enough to wake her up. "Vulcan, hey Vulcan. Are you awake? Don't tell me you're not awake, I know your kind. You're probably just pretending to be unconscious so that you can..." He stopped, suddenly conscious of the fact there would be no advantage for the Vulcan in pretending to be unconscious. "Hey" he grabbed her shoulder, shook her just a little bit. But she didn't wake up. Shran realized there was something wet on his fingers and snatched his hand away. The back of his hand was covered in a green wet and sticky substance. Shran gently peered around her shoulder and saw that there was a slow forming puddle of the green fluid starting to pool around her head, and gathering in the angle of the walls.

He gingerly took a hold of her face, tuning it towards the wall ever so slightly so that he could get a look. But he couldn't see anything, the back of her head was a bloody mess. He had absolutely no idea as to what it meant and how bad it was, just knew that it was not good.

" _Mother of all deities_!" Shran exclaimed into the silence of the shuttlecraft. How could the deities have done this to him? It was bad enough that only he and the Vulcan were left alive in the crash. On top of that fates had to toy with him and make it so that the Vulcan was wounded. Every Andorian knew that a silent Vulcan was better than a live one, but he respected this one and she could be helpful in a bind. Instead, he was pretty much alone and the Vulcan's help was tantalizingly close and yet so very far. He needed her awake somehow.

Having at least one other person alive galvanized him into action. He stiffly got up from her side, muttering under his breath at the pain and effort that took. Once upright again, he scanned the cabin, trying to locate where the emergency supplies were stored. Once he had taken care of her wounds and she was conscious, they could talk about how to get out of this mess.

xx

Trip woke up with a start. Something had happened but he wasn't sure what. In the dark and half-asleep, he fumbled for the light switch of his childhood, remembered he was on Enterprise and called for lights. The computer obligingly set the lighting at night levels, enough to look around but not too bright to be jarring. Trip sat in bed, nursing his head. He had the mother of all migraines. He got up, lurched to the restroom, and promptly threw up, then came back to sit on his bunk.

Something was off. He didn't feel like he was coming down with something, and the migraine was already receding. He cast about mentally, trying to figure what was going on, when the realization brought him to sit even more upright. The connection with T'Pol was gone. He tried to think through the webs of sleep, whether they had talked about it before she left on the mission. Perhaps she had warned him of it and he didn't remember.

There had been so many missions, it kind of all blended together, but he knew that when the physical distance was too far or when there were some naturally occurring phenomena, the connection was interrupted. It had happened before and it must be the same thing happening again, except he forgot she had told him about it. Or perhaps they had discussed it. It all was a blend. He chased the anxiety from his mind and went back to sleep. His last waking thought was that he would have to tell her they would have to figure a softer transition the next time. He didn't exactly care for the physical manifestations otherwise.


	2. Chapter 2

Shran hoisted himself off the floor and looked around the foreign shuttle for any clues as to where the emergency aid kit might be stored. If this were an Andorian vessel, he knew exactly where the medikits would be, close to the door, so they could be grabbed on the way out in case of an emergency. Perhaps the humans were as astute. He slowly and stiffy limped towards the exit hatch. He had noted the human propensity for labeling things on his previous stays on the Enterprise. One could hope they would have labeled the compartment where the emergency supplies were kept.

Except they hadn't.

Muttering a few choice oaths under his breath, mostly having to do with the fate that would await the shuttlecraft designers if he ever laid hands on them, Shran proceeded methodically from compartment to compartment, starting with those on the high side of the slanted shuttle. He found EV suits, food rations, which he carefully put aside along with the water skins he found stuffed into another compartment, field supplies, ropes and hatchets and materials that would be useful if they, sorry he, could get out on the surface of the asteroid, which he could not, and still no first aid kit.

His mood sour, partly from the pain radiating through every muscle and partly from the unforgiveable foolishness of the Humans, he kept opening every hutch and compartment in the wide-bodied shuttle, leaving doors open or slamming them shut as the mood struck him. Finally, in a side compartment right next to the dead pilot, which he would have expected to hold flight-related paraphernalia, he found what he had been looking for.

And throwing his head back, roared his anger and disappointment at the ceiling. Everything in the kit was in Standard, and he could only read Andorian and Vulcan.

Rue the day the Humans had flown to the stars, and twice rue the day they had left the safe confines of their sun's universe! He, Commander Shran of the Andorian Imperial Guard, was stranded on a Human shuttle with an injured Vulcan, and the equivalent of a wood stick as his sole medical tool. If it were not for the Humans, there would be no shuttle and the only Vulcan within fifty yards of him would be a dead Vulcan.

He turned around to stare balefully at the object of his thoughts. Why should he care if he couldn't operate the mediscanner or any of the tools in the medical kit? So what if the Vulcan died because he didn't bring her assistance. That would make him a hero to many on Andoria. On his homeworld, half the imperial force would rise in ovation to laud his determination and courage in refusing to bow to the self-exalted moral superiority of Starfleet. They would sing his praise and extoll him as a model to future generations.

And because of that, he knew with every fiber of his being that whatever fate befell them, he could not, would not let the Vulcan die. Because the empress had not sent him on this contact mission so that Andorian youth could fall back on the safety of their own circumscribed culture but to bring Andoria into a bigger world that would challenge and inform them, and a better future. Even if that meant treating everyone, including a Vulcan, as if they too carried the special spark of Andoria.

And also because if she did die, unspoken questions would follow him for the rest of his life, in the eyes of Archer wondering why his First Officer was dead while he was still alive, in the eyes of the crew wondering how exactly she had died with him at her side, in the eyes of all the Humans he would meet in this brave new world. And in his own eyes, whenever they caught sight of his reflection, wondering if he had done everything he could. And the weight of those thousands of stares already crushed any imagined glory.

Which meant that there he was, stranded on a starship with an injured Vulcan, of all species, that he, Commander Shran of the Andorian Imperial Guard, had to keep alive no matter what. The irony of the universe was endless.

xx

Unaware of what was going on within its folds, the universe kept doing what it was doing, expanding or contracting, perhaps rotating, all according to the dictates of its internal dynamics.

In a far corner of one of its galaxies, a smallish asteroid was rapidly spinning between twin planets, kept in an elliptical pattern between the two in a form of kinetic statis. The asteroid would be attracted to one planet only to be yanked back by the magnetic energy of the other as that one reached the apex of its orbit, before the first one in turn reached its apex and summoned the wayward speck back to it.

Far from being driven crazy by the back and forth, the asteroid had settled into a modified elliptical course above the planets that moved only a few degrees up and down in response to seasonal shifts in the moons' orbits. Also as a result of the tug of war between the planets it spun rapidly spin on its axis, generating enough gravity that the shuttle that had crash-landed on its surface like a fat fly against a windshield was held securely in place where it was and the people inside it safely moored to its floor.

All the while, the asteroid was following its twelve-hour elliptical orbit between the planets, in turn facing them and facing the vacuum of space, the shuttle doting its flank like an angular mole. So that every six hours the shuttle, like the asteroid it was fused with, was bathed in the reflected heat of the planets' suns, and every six hours, it was exposed to the icy coldness of space.

That was too short a time for the temperature inside the shuttle to reach the extremes that the asteroid went through. But the shuttle emergency system was no match for the rapid fluctuation from simmering heat to freezing cold, designed as it was to maintain the minimum temperatures for Human survival. So that every six hours it grew quite cold in the shuttle. Cold enough to feel like an invigorating summer day on Andoria, but well below freezing to a Vulcan.

xx

Shran grabbed the medikit and hobbled back to T'Pol's side, hoping that somehow the mediscanner worked very much like Andorian equipment. His hope that,of all the supplies in the medikit, the scanner at least would be voice-operated had quickly fizzled. What sustained him now was the thought that some things were not that different across all humanoid species.

He turned the scanner on and proceeded to pass it over T'Pol when he stopped and frowned. The scanner was already blinking an alert. Based on his knowledge of Vulcan biology, that was about T'Pol's body temperature, but the temperature reading was normal for a Vulcan. He turned to the settings, hoping by chance to see the Vulcan setting, unable to read the Standard characters on the screen. And realized how futile an endeavor that was. He had absolutely no idea what the mediscanner was telling him, and the foreign instrumentation meant that he could not even rely on his knowledge of Andorian scanners.

"Archer!"

Just screaming his name made Shran feel better. Archer was the reason he was stranded on a foreign shuttle trying to decode strange characters in order to keep alive a Vulcan he shouldn't have been thrown with in the first place. How did those fragile humans, those bumbling fools, ever manage to find their way out of their own universe?! And live through it?! They couldn't even think to adapt their emergency equipment to other species!

Unless the Humans had deliberately put deficient material on board to compromise his chances of survival? Did they plan for the shuttle to crash? Shran's eyes narrowed with suspicion. Could it be that they were actually planning for the contact mission to fail, and perhaps keep the new planet within Humanity's sphere of influence? Shran shook the thoughts out of his head. He trusted Archer, and Archer wouldn't do that. And Archer trusted T'Pol, he wouldn't do that to her either.

Shran looked around the cabin for an outlet to his emotional overflow, something he could kick, pound, or yell at that would lessen his rage and stabilize his emotions. His gaze fell on the flight console and the bodies of the human pilot and the Andorian aide awkwardly splayed on and about it. That was where the main systems were housed. An idea suddenly popped up.

"Computer" Shran called. If the emergency support systems were online, so perhaps was the computer?

"Computer ready" came the reply. Shran smiled, antennae wiggling in pleasure. He was not so alone anymore.

If he could access the computer, perhaps he could get the scanner translated… He eyed the console, mentally computing how long it would take him to reach it, figure out what he was looking for, and come back to the critically injured Vulcan. That was more than the time he could spare. He sighed and turned back to her. He would not be able to get precise results and he would have to be careful about anything that the scanner brought up but at least he would get a general sense about what was wrong. The physiological readings would be useless until he could get to the computer, though.

First, though, he threw a "Computer, record" at the computer. The silence had been weighing on him and Shran kept an ongoing monologue as he proceeded with T'Pol's examination, once he was done with a brief introduction about the folly of launching space shuttles without properly providing for the scanning of their alien passengers by other aliens. If they both ended up dying on the accursed shuttle, the Humans, the Andorians and the Vulcans would at least know what had been going on and not have to worry that he and T'Pol had ended up killing each other. Plus he could give Archer a piece of his mind along the way.

The scanner screen profiled a head under a huge read circle. "What a surprise" said Shran, hoping the computer could properly interpret inflections of sarcasm. "Now scanning the neck, no trouble there. Shoulders are fine, lungs seem ok though I don't know how much I can trust that. Archer, your scanner didn't bleep even though her heart was not where it was supposed to be. Now, that's a little strange don't you think. I guess if the heart was there it would have told me if it was beating, but if that thing is calibrated for Humans, you'd expect it to know there's no heart where it's supposed to be."

The monologue stopped as the scanner blinked another alert. This time there was a large red-orange circle over what looked to be the midsection. "Ok" Shran went on "I don't know what this is telling me exactly but it looks like we have another issue. Could be broken ribs. Ah, there's the heart. But this thing doesn't seem to be fazed by that. Archer, do you hear that. Your scanner can't tell the heart is not where it should be. Where in the name of the deities did you get that thing? Same guy who sold you the seat restraints? Tell Starfleet Andoria will be happy to set up a fund and help you guys buy proper seat belts. Well, her heart is beating, that's one good thing. You hear that Archer, your first officer is alive. And I am taking care of her. You definitely owe me, pink-skin."

Shran omitted to say that the reason for the broken ribs, possibly the internal injuries, he couldn't tell without a properly calibrated scanner, was because the Vulcan had cushioned the hard fall of a certain Andorian and prevented his head from suffering the same kind of damage her head did. Some things were better kept to oneself.

xx

Trip's eyes popped open in the dark of the night. Instead of lulling him back to the land of dreams, his sleep-fogged brain propped him up with the crystal-clear thought that T'Pol had never mentioned any reason the bond would not be maintained during her mission. She was not going so far away. He checked the numbers on the chronobase, saw that it was the middle of the night, hesitated for a second, then got up and sprung to the intercom before he lost the nerve.

"Commander Tucker to Captain Archer," he waited a couple of minutes, wondering if he would need to hail him again.

"Trip?" the voice on the other end sounded groggy. Obviously Jonathan had been sound asleep. Trip didn't feel too bad, considering the number of times Archer had gotten him or T'Pol up in the middle of the night.

"Captain, I know this is going to sound strange, but I have a feeling something unexpected has happened to the diplomatic party. Have you heard from them?"

"Trip…" Jonathan started, then shook his head. "They're not supposed to check in with us until after their arrival." Trip must just be missing T'Pol and not realize that was why he was anxious. On the other hand, it didn't hurt to make sure. "Okay, I'll ask the communications standby to reach out to them. We'll hear back before breakfast. Good night. Archer out." Archer figured Communications would report on the shuttle and that would be the end of it. He stretched and went back to bed.

xx

Shran looked at the screen of the mediscanner, where he had called the graphic description of how to bandage a head wound. The only issue being that the schematics started with a long narrow band of gauze and there was no such supply in the medikit. That had led to another long diatribe to the computer about the poor planning of Starfleet quartermaster and aspersions about the organization's ability to finance its existence if it couldn't afford gauze strips.

But that still didn't give him what he needed. He had to improvise. His brain finally registered what his eyes had been seeing all this time. T'Pol was wearing her ceremonial Vulcan robes. His antennae leaned back over his head in pleasure, before coming back up in perplexity. The robes were luxurious and he wasn't sure how pleased the Vulcan would be if he damaged them too much. He looked at the Vulcan characters wrapping around the stole, remembering these were the clan names. Andorians cherished family relationships and he simply didn't feel right defacing the name of her clan. Plus, who knew what kind of sacrilegious act this might be on Vulcan, punishable by death or by being accursed for seven generations. He finally decided on the lining of the outer robe, easily rendered into thin strips with his ceremonial dagger.

Shran painstakingly followed the instructions on the mediscanner, being so very careful each time he lifted her head to pass the fabric behind it, afraid to put too much pressure, afraid to not put enough, gingerly trying to replicate exactly what showed on his screen. It took him the better part of an hour, and then he rested on his heels gloating with self-satisfaction at his handiwork. Made of rich satin, the bandage had all the appearance of an exotic and mysterious headwrap.

Now she was sure to wake up, wasn't she?


	3. Chapter 3

Archer woke up, feeling more tired than usual, then remembered Trip's interruption during the middle of the night. A quick glance at the chronometer confirmed he still had a couple of hours before alpha shift. He would have expected the alert from Communications by now, telling him they had established contact with the shuttle. He wondered what was keeping them, then pushed the thought out of his mind and went about his routine as usual. Still... Could the night communications stand-in somehow overlook his request? He didn't think that was possible but everyone was at the mercy of a human mistake.

As he was looking at his reflection shaving in the mirror he realized he had not stopped waiting for the incoming beep from Communications. He could no longer delude himself that there was no issue. Instead of heading for the mess hall, he proceeded directly to the bridge. Where he was completely unsurprised to find Trip, looking like sleep had eluded him for the better part of the night. The engineer came by his side as soon as he sat down.

The communications specialist was at his station, nervously trying very hard not to stare behind him at his superior officers. Archer waited for the young man to volunteer status, finally deciding to let him off his misery.

"Specialist Snordoff, any word?"

The young man swiveled his chair until he was facing the captain and Trip, standing right by Archer.

"Negative, sir. We've been hailing all frequencies, but have not received a reply."

Archer frowned. That was unusual. "Thank you, Specialist. Did you follow all protocols?"

"Aye, sir. I followed all regulations protocols about establishing contact. I also alerted several Starfleet stations on the flight path of the shuttle to be on the lookout for the vessel."

Archer nodded "Good thinking. Any other protocol we could try?"

The Specialist seemed relieved "Ensign Hoshi would know if there are other protocols that are applicable."

"Please have Ensign Hoshi come to the bridge. Thank you, Snordoff." _Time to call in the big guns_ , Archer thought to himself. A feeling that was evidently shared by the Specialist.

xx

"Computer, record. This is Shran of Andoria. Our shuttle encountered a gravitational shear and we were thrown onto an asteroid near two small planets. I can't figure out where exactly the system is but we seem to have been thrown light years off our course to Fatepe-Ijtr. Tell the Jitreds we'll catch them next time to talk about the United Federation of Planets. Computer pause."

Shran sighed. He glanced towards the right aft side of the cabin, where he had laid the dead as best as he could, given their state of rigor mortis, and hid their bodies with boxes and assorted materials from the hatches, to honor them with a measure of discretion. It had been a painful and slow process.

"Computer record. Four of the six passengers are dead, three of them Starfleet, and one of them my aide. The only ones alive as I record this are myself and Commander T'Pol, though she is injured and has not regained consciousness. Computer pause." T'Pol still had not woken up but the fact she hadn't died in the first hours made him hopeful that she would get better. Of course, if he had calibrated scanners, he would be able to get some kind of diagnosis about what was going on, though the head wound was kind of obvious.

Partly for lack of better thing to do, Shran picked up an emergency ration and a new skin of water. He looked at T'Pol, wondering if she needed to drink. It was rumored on Andoria that Vulcans could spend weeks without drinking any water, another proof of how they were dried up husks disconnected from the pulse of life. But he had seen her drink on Enterprise. Unsure which was true, he decided he would wait until she regained consciousness.

Shran looked ahead through the front window of the shuttle. He was getting bored and antsy, with nothing to do. And with every limb hurting, he couldn't even pace. At least, in the two days they had been traveling to Fatepe-Jitr before the accident, he could banter with the human crew or talk to his aide and there was enough activity on all sides to keep him entertained, T'Pol excepted, all she did was stare at her hand-held padd as if it held something of great interest. He had to admit they needed someone in their party to know the United Federation of Planets constitution and regulations and there was some use to learning about Fatepe's organization and civilization, but it made for a poor traveling companion. And now there was nothing to do and nobody to talk to. His only audience was the computer. And through the computer his friend Archer.

He went on. "Computer record. The emergency systems in the shuttle are still working but the communication beacon has been destroyed. There is no way for me to let Enterprise know where we are or where I think we are. Archer, I am leaving this recording in case you are too late. Based on what I can see through the shuttlecraft window, the asteroid is caught on a loop between two small planets. I see them passing through every six hours or so. Those are the good hours. Because when I don't, this place becomes an icebox - it reminds me of summers on Andoria. Looking at your frail little ship, I don't know how many hot to cold to hot it can take before the outer skin becomes brittle. If that happens, Archer, you owe me big."

xx

Hoshi shook her head in frustration. "Still nothing, Captain." She had been leaning into her earpiece for hours, trying to discern the faintest echo coming back at them, a needle in the haystack that might let them know where their friends and colleagues were.

Archer got off his chair, walked to her station. "It's ok, Hoshi" he said soothingly, feeling the frustration mounting in the Ensign.

She swiveled her chair to him and Travis "When were they due to arrive?" she asked.

Archer hesitated, then nodded to Travis. The mission to Fatepe-Ijtr was top secret, but that didn't hold against finding his people if they were lost. And Shran might as well be one of his people on this mission.

Travis called up a record on his console, looked up at Archer "If they followed the flight pattern I established, the earliest they would arrive is later today, ETA in four hours. I allowed for a degree of uncertainty on a trip that long, but no matter what they should be there before delta shift."

Archer narrowed his eyes at the screen. Another four hours of waiting? Not on his watch. "Hoshi, put a call in to Council Member Proiit on Fatepe-Ijtr in six hours. Unless they arrive before then and contact us." He turned to the bridge at large "I want every senior officer in the command center in thirty minutes. You too, Travis. Hoshi, keep monitoring for any incoming hails." Archer went back to sit in his command chair, brewing, while his officers discreetly delegated or cleared their schedule as required.

xx

There was darkness and there was searing light. The darkness was outside and the searing light was inside, sending waves of pain down shrieking nerves in her head. She wanted to flee the pain into the darkness, where she had been finding a measure of peace until something tugged at her that would not let her escape the fury of the light. She knew what the something was and yet she didn't. She knew there was something she needed to do but she didn't know what. The pain in her head precluded any organized thought and obliterated all memory.

Instinct took over.

"…tu" she croaked. Shran's head whipped around at the sound.

"What did you say?"

"O'tu" Shran shook his head. It sounded Vulcan, but it was not any word he knew. He had studied Vulcan throughout his military education, Andorian imperial guard believing that it was a sacred duty to know the language of their enemy and be able to tell exactly what these Vulcan liars were saying. But he wasn't sure if she was actually saying a word that existed and his knowledge of the language was not good enough that he could figure it out.

He walked over to hear, crouched by her side "What?"

T'Pol's head was a hot nova of pain. She tried to garner her thoughts across the wall of flames that had invaded her skull. Her eyes were open and she could see Shran. How did she know his name, who was he? She closed her eye, chasing down the tendril of thought that would lead to the knowledge of who he was, why she knew him. But she came up empty-handed except for the knowledge she needed to speak Standard English, not Vulcan. The words abutted against the edges of her mind, but disappeared as soon as she tried to grab them.

She made an effort to think back to the Standard she had learned. "Cold" the word she was looking for was cold. She took a hold of it. The other word that crossed her mind was "I". There was something missing. Another memory came up. 'I' was the subject and 'cold' was the predicate but it was incomplete. A verb. She needed a verb. The word 'be' floated in her consciousness. She considered it. 'I be cold'? it didn't sound right. 'I am cold' that sounded right, but 'be' started with a 'b' and 'am' started with an 'a' and the root was not the same therefore it might not be the same word, unless there was a relationship between 'a' and 'b'? Her mind was too tired to sort it out. She opened her eyes, looked at Shran. She found it difficult to talk, made herself do it through the haze that surrounded her brain, "I...cold" she closed her eyes and drifted back into unconsciousness.

Shran sighed in frustration. She was cold. He was nippily comfortable and she was cold. Vulcans were such big babies. His antennae were dancing their own jig on his head, disclosing his true state of mind. She had woken up.

He got up from his seat stiffly, though he could tell that in a little while he would be able to walk normally. Just in time for the emergency system or the outer hull to fail, whichever came first. Peachy.

He hobbled to the hatch where he had seen the emergency thermoblankets and grabbed both of them. These things were way too hot, he would never be able to sleep with one of them. They were perfect. He went back to where T'Pol lay, and started considering, antennae raised in a half-frown. Putting the blanket on her was the most obvious approach, but that still meant she was laying directly on the steel floor, and that was not good. And he wanted to move her as little as possible, afraid of jarring her head or her body. Also, there was little room for him to maneuver between her seat and the wall.

An idea came suddenly and he proceeded, lifting her body so that one half was up towards him while he tucked the blanket behind her whole length, then slowly, part by part, lifting her an inch or so off the floor, just enough to grab the blanket and pull, and bring it to the other side. It was a long and drawn out process but then he had all the time in the world. When he finally straightened up again, he felt like he did after a hard won victory aboard the Kumari. This time, there was no downside, no casualties, and his antennae twitched in all directions in glee.

Eventually, T'Pol was cocooned in the blanket and he could go back on to waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

"Put in on the screen" Archer told the Science Specialist standing in for T'Pol. He waited until the young woman blew the star chart to the dimensions of the main screen in the command center. Archer turned to Travis. "You both go and figure out all the potential routes the shuttle could have taken, based on the flight plan you prepared for them"

"Aye, sir" Travis and Specialist Kuruya paired off to the nearest station.

Archer turned to Reed "Based on what we know so far, any chance this was something else than an accident?"

The British man narrowed his eyes and then shrugged. "There are no reports of piracy of other illegal activity in this quadrant, Captain. There is always the possibility of adverse interests on Andoria who do not want the United Federation of Planets to expand. On Andoria or on several other member planets, for that matter. But even though this was a first contact neither Shran nor T'Pol are official diplomats, so I really doubt so."

Archer nodded in agreement. It was a fluke that the two had been sent to meet with Council Member Proiit. Proiit had expressed the desire to meet non-human partners in the Federation of Planets and talk to them at length, to confirm Archer's claims that the federation was diverse and open to all. It just happened that Shran had been on board as he was still waiting for his own command after the Kumari was destroyed. Enterprise had been giving him a courtesy lift to an Andorian satellite station and had just dropped him off when the request came from Fatepe-Ijtr.

The Federation found itself in the rare position of being able to send representatives of two of the main species, Andorians and Vulcans. Vulcan had agreed that diplomatic representation was a comfortable role for T'Pol given her experience on the Vulcan embassy staff, and the Empress herself had commandeered Shran for the task and Enterprise had gone back to the planet where they had dropped Shran off. Which is how Shran and T'Pol had ended up on a shuttle bound for Fatepe-Ijtr, where they would meet with Council Member Proiit and talk about the integration of non-Human species in the United Federation of Planets. Nobody had any idea before it happened that the two of them would be cast in a position of official delegates for the Federation. An attack was highly unlikely.

Which still didn't explain what happened to the shuttlecraft. Archer turned to Tucker "Is there any way we can identify the shuttlepod signature and track it in space?"

The engineer shook his head. "Not at impulse speed, not over two days later. The ionization trail might have lasted for a couple of days, at the most, but that would be finding a needle in a haystack." He paused. "I guess we could follow their flight plan, see if anything comes up."

"Let's do that." Archer turned to Travis, engrossed in drawing out potential routes for the shuttle with the Specialist Kuruya. "Travis, can you send the flight plan to your Navigation station?"

Travis looked up from his console. Something in his body language told Archer there was something else. "What is it?" Archer asked.

"I gave them the flight plan, sir, but that does not mean they followed it." Archer knew what Travis was talking about. Pilots were all the same, extremely resistant to following another's path, wanting to do everything by themselves. The ability to fly tended to make one supremely arrogant.

"Can you bring the flight plan on the main screen?" asked Archer.

"Aye, sir" A couple of minutes later the computer beeped the incoming flight plan and Archer had Specialist Kuruya overlay it on the star chart. They all looked at the dotted line that perhaps their friends had followed. Archer narrowed his eyes. Even though the shuttle pilot may have deliberately not followed Travis' flight plan, human nature was such that he would have had a hard time following a diametrically different route. "Let's hope that they couldn't find a better one." He turned to the intercom. "Captain to Bridge, lay in the flight plan that Ensign Mayweather is going to send you, keeping sensors at twenty thousand kilometers in all directions. You want to report anything that seems out of the ordinary, bonus points for an ionization trail. Archer out."

He looked at the crew assembled in the command center. Travis and Specialist Kuruya would be busy figuring out potential flight vectors, Trip was going to be looking for a needle in a haystack, Reed – "Lieutenant Reed" Archer addressed him "can you go over all systems and instrumentations in the shuttlepod, see if there's anything in there, anything, that could leave a trace? I'll be on the bridge."

xx

Shran didn't know what it was that arose him but he was starting to wake up. He had no idea where the asteroid and its conjoined planets were in their crazy merry-go-round, but based on the clouds of water vapor as he breathed in the soft glow of the emergency lighting they must be in the middle of what he had come to call 'the night cycle' when their little square footage of asteroid real estate was on the side opposite the planets and had no protection from the frozen vacuum of deep space. Then he heard it again. A slight rumble. That's what had woke him up. "Computer, lights, night" he called to the central console, and, once his eyes had adjusted to the reduced glow of the lights, he looked around in the cabin, intent on finding the source of the rumble. There again. It came from its right hand side. That's where T'Pol was. What was going on? He stared fixedly at her, All of a sudden she started shivering. The shivering went on for a few seconds before dying out, at about the same time the rumbling noise stopped. Crap. The noise was the amplification of her shivering transmitted by the conductive floor.

Shran got up, walked over to her. Yes, it was cold, even for an Andorian, but more like a bracing cold, nothing dangerous. Unless you were Vulcan, he guessed. And then, obviously, unless you were a very badly injured Vulcan. He had to keep her warm. A glance at the outside and at the clock told him they had another two hours of falling temperatures, before the pod was once again in view of the planets and the mean temperature in the pod would go up by a few degrees. It must be about thirty-seven degrees, definitely above freezing point. Based on the previous twelve hours, the temperature in the shuttlepod would drop to twenty-seven degrees at its lowest. Shran guessed that was not very good from a Vulcan perspective.

First, he needed to move her. Now that more time had passed, he was less worried that she would suddenly die if during the process of moving her. He eyed the petite Vulcan. There were two ways of doing this. He could just pick her up and move her, or he could use the thermal blanket she was rolled in to slide her along the floor. In each case, he had to be careful to maneuver around her chair.

xx

"Captain, I have established contact with Fatepe-Ijtr" Hoshi half-turned towards the captain's chair, head pressing her earpiece to her head, fully focused on the transmission. "In my ready room, Ensign" Archer called over his shoulder as he walked over to his ready room. He had hesitated to have the communication transmitted on the main screen, but Shran and T'Pol were on a diplomatic mission, meaning discretion was the better part of valor.

Archer smiled as the image of the furry alien coalesced on his desktop screen. He could never quite shake the feeling he was talking to a stuffed animal. "Counsellor Proiit," he saluted.

Proiit smiled in return. "Captain Archer, I bring you salutations from my world. The Supreme Council is very much looking forward to welcoming Being Shran and Being T'Pol on our planet."

Archer frowned, all joviality and good humor lost. "I take it they haven't arrived yet?" he asked then went on when he saw the perplexed look left Proiit's features "Their shuttle left Enterprise over two days ago. We were expecting them to arrive a couple of hours ago, though they may have been delayed en route. But we have lost all contact with the shuttle."

The alien blinked his large bovine eyes a few times. "I don't understand, captain"

"We feat that something may have happened to the shuttle they were on. If they do arrive planetside, could you please let us know right away. In the meantime, with excuses, Council Member, I need to get search parties going."

The alien nodded "I see. In that case, Captain, my world joins you in concern and we want to wish you best wishes and full success. I will let you know as soon as Being Shran and Being T'Pol arrive on our planet, if perhaps they were delayed." He leaned forward into the viewscreen "Please let me know if there are any developments."

Archer nodded his understanding, while part of him couldn't help but sneer that Council Member Proiit would probably be putting out calls to Starfleet to find replacements as soon as the communication as over. But he had much more pressing concerns. His friend and his First Officer were missing. Who was also his friend. He thumbed the intercom on his desk "Lieutenant Reed, please come to my ready room. Hoshi, I want you to join us in the command center. And get someone from Science who is a wiz at star charts." Travis and Kuruya had laid out dozens of possible flight plans that the shuttle could have taken. But perhaps there was something they all had missed.

xx

"Computer, start recording. This is Shran, member of the Andorian Imperial Guard. We're almost at the end of the night rotation and the temperature in the shuttle has dropped to twenty-seven degrees. Archer, let me remind you that that is cold. I'm trying to keep your First Officer here alive and you give me a shuttlecraft with wet noodles for an atmospheric regulator. Why can't the emergency systems keep this place above freezing? When I get out of here, I'll put you in touch with real engineers on Andoria, who will be happy to show you the schematics, on a humanitarian basis. Computer, stop recording"

Shran sighed. That felt better but it didn't do much in terms of the current crisis. After he had dragged T'Pol to the center of the shuttle, he had wrapped her in the second thermal blanket, but the heat had dropped rapidly and he was back to having a shivering Vulcan on his hands. He came from an ice planet, he certainly knew about keeping warm and the various methods that could be used. He had plenty of options, but whatever he did he was not going to share body warmth with her. He was a Commander in the Imperial Guard and she was a Vulcan. And that was never going to happen. Never. Instead, he knelt by her side and proceeded to briskly rub her limbs in succession.

The Vulcan's eyes opened and she looked at him expressionlessly. Shran grinned through the exercise. "Well, well, well, the ice princess wakes up. Do you know about the ice princess? It's an old fairy tale from Andoria, about a princess who got lost in the ice caves and was found a week later, frozen into a stalagmite. They brought her back to the imperial castle and people lined up for miles along the path where the _enurghs_ were pulling her body on a chariot all the way back to the capital. Once she was inside the castle, the warmth melted the ice surrounding her and her servants proceeded to rub her dry when her lover, the prince of a faraway ice floe stopped them and said he would do it himself. He took a soft towel and rubbed her limbs dry, starting with her left arm. He loved her very much and wanted to make sure she would be dry and warm on her way to the kingdom of liquid ice. When he got to her right arm, close to where the heart is, she woke up. They were married and had many children."

Shran paused, catching his breath. While he had been telling the story, he had worked vigorously on T'Pol's limbs. He didn't know about her, but he was warm and toasty from the exercise. Actually, he did know about her. The shivering had stopped. The temperature in the cabin was rising as well, they were completing the night cycle and the temperature would soon be comfortable. At least for him. And she had the blankets. She was still looking at him. He smiled at her "Since I have no plans to marry you and have many children, I started with the right arm." He paused. "How are you doing?"

She briefly closed her eyes then opened them again. He could see the muscles working in her jaw, she wanted to say something. After several seconds, Shran came to her help. "You're finding it difficult to speak?"

"..Yes.."

He frowned. The damage from the head injury could be impacting her ability to speak. "How's your head?" he asked.

T'Pol closed her eyes again. The pain in her head was of supernova proportion, and not abating. And she couldn't find the words to describe it. Her eyes opened again. There was one word that she remembered. Speaking was an effort, the sheer physical act of speaking feeling like pushing through a resistant barrier of gel. It took her a few seconds but finally the word was out ".. Bad.." Her voice didnt sound right.

Shran's antennae sprung up to the sky. He had never heard a Vulcan use that word before. And certainly not to describe their physical condition. He had been expecting the usual range of answers from 'I feel fine' 'I am fine' 'I am a little bit uncomfortable' 'I am uncomfortable but I'll live', meaning 'I'm on death doorstep', but "bad"? If he had not been worried before, now he was.

"Computer record. Archer, we have a problem. Get your Human hide here as fast as you can. Computer stop."


	5. Chapter 5

Archer's hand hovered over the intercom switch on the arm of his chair. One, two, three. The teams had been at it for hours now and he had been back and forth to the command center a dozen times. Travis had laid out hundreds of different flight paths the shuttle could have flown, his replacement at the helm had been following the initial flight path, sensors on alert. The shuttle was two days in its travels when Trip got a hint something was amiss, and they had hardly traveled a full day since then.

He brought his hand back to the front of the armchair arm, which he squeezed. Five minutes later, he found his hand hovering over the intercom switch again. But calling them to find out if anything had come up was an exercise in futility. They would alert him as soon as they found anything. He couldn't stress out his officers in the command center more than they already were.

He decided that if he found his hand slipping to the intercom switch one more time he would go to his ready room. Suddenly the intercom beeped and Archer almost jumped out of his skin. He hit the switch before he fully realized it. "Archer here. Any news?"

"Captain" that was Travis. "We are picking an anomaly on the edge of the search area."

"Extend the search area fifty thousand kilometers on all sides. I'm on my way. Archer out." Archer took two steps to the turbolift. "Reed, you have the bridge." He realized that Reed was in the command room and turned fully around, trying to figure out who was present and not so green that it would be a mistake to leave them in charge. "Hess, you have the bridge" he called over his shoulder as he stepped into the turbolift.

All five officers in the command room were staring at the main screen, which showed next to each other the 20,000km sensor sweep and the 50,000km one. "Ensign?" Archer asked. It was Travis that responded. "See here on the 20,000 km sweep, Captain, that shadow in the upper north sector?" Archer stepped closer to the screen to inspect the slightly blurry space sector. Travis was going on. "Here it is on the 50,000 km sweep." The blurry shape was off-center but not so out-in-left-field that it could never have been in the path of a shuttle pod. "Did you lay out possible flight coordinates?" Archer asked.

"Yes, sir" this time Kuruya answered. "Ensign Sato and I laid out probably flight trajectories based on where the shuttle was when we still had radar contact, and then based on the coordinates they provided the times they checked in with us. Three of those paths intersect directly the anomaly."

Archer turned to Reed and Tucker. "Anything?" Tucker shook his head, mouth set in a thin line. "No, Captain. Unless their emergency beacon is still operative or we get them in a sensor sweep, it is really going to be finding a needle in a haystack."

Archer turned back to Mayweather. "Travis, lay a path to that area, but proceed slowly as we approach. Let's go see what it is. How long do you think before we get there?"

"Another five hours at impulse speed, sir."

Archer nodded. Impulse was by far the least risky speed. "Travis, take it on the bridge. Specialist Kuruya, stay in the command center. Keep sensors at 50,000 kms and let me know as soon as you get something, anything. Hoshi, Malcolm, Trip - get back to the bridge. "

xx

Shran woke up knowing in his limbs that he was less stiff. The bruises were starting to disappear, allowing for easier movement. He got up and stretch rather fluidly, if not as entirely mindlessly as he used to. It felt good to get the blood pumping again the old way. He checked on T'Pol but she was still asleep. The very first time she had awakened, she had sunk back into unconsciousness within seconds. This last time, she had remained aware, or semi-aware, he didn't think she had been with it totally, for close to twenty minutes. Things were looking up.

At least, she had stopped shivering. Shran glanced out the shuttle windows. They were close to the outer edge of the second planet. He must have slept most of the past six hours. This meant they were entering into the six hours of deep space, and the temperature in the shuttle would once again deep below freezing.

Shran pulled out his communicator, chiefly out of habit. "Shran to Enterprise. Archer, can you hear me? Come in Archer." Yeah, right, like that was going to do anything... He desultorily dropped the communicator on the seat at his side, moving noisily across the cabin, all the while peering at the sleeping Vulcan from the corner of his eye. But the noise didn't seem to wake her up.

Shran sighed, pulled her a food ration. The corners of his mouth dipped into a deep frown while his antennae drooped dejectedly on each side of his forehead. These were their emergency rations?! He would have been ashamed to feed them to his pets. These were only good for ice bores, and they probably would twist in horror as they bore their way through. He looked up. "Computer start recording" Might as well keep educating Archer about what real space farers considered adequate.

xx

"Captain, we have a read on the anomaly." Hoshi was at her console on the bridge, fingers pressed to the earpiece in her ear through which she was in contact with Kuruya.

Archer nodded. "Have Kuruya come to the bridge." It had been a long three hours of waiting, stacked up on a full day of searching, and the psychological and physical drag of worrying. He had told his senior officers to use the travel time to rest, but they had found it as impossible as he had to let the edge off and had all remained at their station, looking a little bit worse for wear.

It was already delta shift. They still had hours to go but were now close enough to get a better view. The turbolift doors swooshed open and Specialist Kuruya stepped on the bridge. "What do you have for us, Specialist?"

"Captain, sir, if I could patch on to the science station in command central?" Archer nodded to Hoshi and she went over to T'Pol's console, hit a couple of keys. The image that filled the main screen looked like a blurry patch of space. Archer rose his eyebrows. Kuruya started talking - she had a Vulcan commanding officer, she knew what raised eyebrows meant - "what we are seeing, or not quite seeing, is a gravitational funnel. If a spacecraft were to encounter it, it would be sucked into it and thrown at the other end, which is..." a white vector appeared on the screen " in that sector. Of course, this is a somewhat simplistic summary of what would happen" the young ensign went on.

She didn't think it would be helpful to comment that the forces of shear inside the funnel would most likely tear a smaller ship, like a shuttlecraft, apart before it even had a chance of being thrown out at the other end.

Archer narrowed his eyes at the screen. "So if the shuttlecraft had been sucked into this … funnel… where would it go exactly?"

Kuruya called another chart of space on the main screen. "This is a view of the exit sector, so to speak. It looks like a planetary system of two conjoined planets with a hyper-rotating moon inside an asteroid belt. The science team has tried to calculate a vessel trajectory after entering the funnel, but there are too many variables. We think that a spacecraft that would be caught into the funnel would be spat out close to the moons."

"How far is the system?"

"It would take six hours at warp five, Captain."

"Did you find any other anomalies, anything else that would explain what happened to the shuttle?"

Kuruya shook her head before she started talking. "No, Captain. We've kept monitoring for 50,000 km in all directions and there is nothing else in this quadrant. On our present course and speed, making the necessary piloting adjustments, we'll get to the system in a few hours."

That clinched it. Archer found himself willing to let go of their current slow-paced search for any signs of the shuttle. He had a hunch the shuttle had been sucked into the gravitational shear. He realized he could be wrong, and if he were wrong they would never find the shuttle crew alive. If the shuttle had been sucked into the system and they proceeded cautiously as planned, they would never find the shuttle crew alive either. _Damn if you do and damn if you don't_ , Archer thought to himself. Out loud, his orders rang across the bridge "Commander Tucker, get me as much speed as you can out of those engines. Mr. Mayweather, set a course for that binary system, as fast as you can go."

Archer settled back in his chair, all feelings of fatigue temporarily forgotten. He hoped he was right.

xx

Shran had left scathing messages for Archer, rubbed his antennae, shadow-boxed to keep his reflexes sharp, gone over the main console one more time to see if there was anything he could put back together, any relay that would magically reconnect from the sheer power of his will. Two hours had gone by.

He slouched in his seat, contemplating his breath coming out in short puffs. The temperature was coolly pleasant. Then he felt it again, a low rumbling coming up from the floor. He was up on his feet in a heartbeat, then at T'Pol's side in the same motion. Yes, she had started shivering again. "Computer start recording. Archer, this is Shran again. You really need to get here as fast as you can. Your Vulcan cannot deal with the cold. I have half a mind to use one of the phasers to warm us up. Hopefully I won't blow up the ship. Computer stop." Funny how that made him feel better each time.

But however much he had been jesting, his mind kept coming back to the phaser pistols. Perhaps he could use them to heat one of the elements in the shuttle. He shook his head savagely. _Think_ , Shran, _think_. If there were any kind of fire, what would that do to the oxygen reserves. Oh, they would be warm alright, if he managed to heat something up without tearing a hole in the hull, they would be warm and without air. Being cold and breathing certainly beat the alternative.

He also started reviewing other possible ways to keep the Vulcan warm. The one thing he would not do was share body heat with her. He was Commander Shran of the Andorian Imperial Guard and it simple was a question of principle, no more, no less. Never would he share his personal space with a Vulcan. If it came to that, he would have to inform Archer that regrettably his First Officer did not survive.

A moan jerked him out of his reverie. T'Pol was slowly shaking her head from side to side, eyelids fluttering. "I guess the cold is what wakes you up, eh?" Shran asked her rhetorically. It didn't matter if she responded or not, he was thrilled to have someone to talk to. Dropping by her side, he started briskly rubbing her limbs again. And because he liked the story a lot, he also started telling her the story of the ice princess again, this time adding details and intonation the way his grandmother used to tell it.

An hour later, Shran was sitting back on his heels, taking stock of the situation. T'Pol was awake, and she was still shivering. And the temperature was dropping. Rubbing her limbs worked well to get her warm, but that was not lasting very long. He had already done it twice, he was hot, and she was cold. He could do it again, but it was fast becoming an exercise in futility.

T'Pol's shivering, which had been intermittent, was now constant. As the temperature in the cabin dipped again, it turn into outright shaking. "Stop, stop" Shran held her shoulders, trying to minimize or stop the shivering. "Listen, you have to stop this. You don't want to shake your head." She looked at him wordlessly. "You understand me? You're going to stop the shaking?" Shran waited until she made eye contact, then once he had confirmed that she did seem to recognize him, let go of her shoulders. Thirty seconds later the shaking resumed.

xx

They had been going at warp five for five hours now when Kuruya called from the science station. "Captain, I think I have a visual."

"On the screen"

The bridge crew stared at the starscape ahead, unsure as to what it was they had a visual of. "We're two million miles away, Captain," the Specialist explained. Archer refrained from sighing out loud. He missed T'Pol, the issue would never have come up with her. "Magnify, ensign" He tried to keep the long-suffering tone out of his voice. The screen sprang to life and they could see, at somewhat of a distance, the twin planets and their moon, though the definition was not enough to be able to discern any details.

Archer rose from his chair, walked towards the screen, squinting even though he consciously knew that would still not be able to tell of any details on the surface.

"Hoshi, try to contact them."

"Enterprise to T'Pol? Respond please." static was the only answer. "Enterprise to Shran. Please respond." Again, static erupted from her station.

Archer turned back towards his chair. "Keep reaching out to them. Specialist Kuruya, when are we going to be close enough for surface scans?"

Kuruya bent back to her station, starting keying variables in. Right at the point when Archer though he was not going to get an answer, she looked up. "Another 2 hours and 40 minutes for long-range scans, sir. Approximately. Longer for surface scans." Archer nodded. That was good enough and there was no point making her feel inadequate. "Start long-range scans as soon as you're able."

He sat down for another brisk round of waiting.


	6. Chapter 6

"Is something the matter, Commander Tucker?" Archer's voice cut into Trip's reverie and he slowly became aware of his surroundings, including the fact that he was kneading his upper arms. "Are you cold?" Archer and the rest of the bridge crew were watching him curiously.

Trip cleared his throat, feeling himself flush. "Ah, nah, everything is fine." And it was. He knew from an operational perspective that the temperature was set at a constant 20 degrees Celsius and that the bridge was not cold. He looked down at his thighs, and started absent-mindedly rubbing them to get the blood flowing. He stopped himself again, looked up at Archer with dismay. "I'm not cold." Then why was he acting as if he were? He looked down at his limbs again. He felt strange, too, like there were wisps of fog at the edge of his consciousness, something was calling him. His head snapped back up, eyes widening in realization. He only knew of one person that sensitive to the cold.

"T'Pol's alive!" he announced in the silence of the bridge. Hoshi and Travis turned around to look at him in surprise. Archer got up from his chair, taking a couple of steps towards Trip. He was going to ask why and how and then realized he kind of already knew why and how. If Trip said she was alive, that was good enough for him. He turned back to Travis. "Full speed ahead, Ensign."

"Aye, sir." Travis refrained from pointing out they already were going ahead at full speed. He leaned over his controls, trying to bodily coax the ship to go just a little faster, intent on the star system they could hardly make out at the upper edge of the screen.

xx

Shran was anxiously pacing up and down the cabin. T'Pol had barely survived the last cold spell. It had taken him rubbing her limbs and holding her to stop her shaking for what seemed like hours. He was bone tired exhausted and he didn't know how he was going to manage not falling asleep. But if he slept through the next cold spell she would die for sure.

They only had a little over an hour before the temperature started dipping again. He reached the back of the shuttle, turned on his heel, and started again towards the front, gingerly stepping around T'Pol in the middle of the shuttle. He was going to spend the next hour pacing up and down, up and down. He knew that if he stopped and sat, he would fall asleep before he even felt it.

He wished very hard that Enterprise would find them. He had no idea where they were, but how many twin planet systems with an orbiting asteroid could there be on the Vulcan star charts? Except for the small detail that nobody in the universe knew they were on an asteroid orbiting twin planets. But things always seemed to work out for Archer. Hopefully they would work out again and Enterprise would find them.

Quickly.

xx

"I have the system on long range scanners." The announcement shook Archer out of the quasi-torpor he had fallen into. He had been on the bridge for close to twenty-four hours straight, and caffeine was no longer useful as a stimulant. He looked around him bleary eyed. He had sent Hoshi and Travis off the bridge hours ago, Reed would be relieved as soon as they got a sign of the shuttle, there wasn't much a tactical officer could do, rescue-wise. The only other senior officer on the bridge with him was of course Trip. He hadn't even dared suggest that the engineer take some rest. He already knew the answer and had no wish to get into the knock-out drag-down fight it would take to get him off the bridge.

The announcement about the long-range scanners was enough of a jolt that he felt his mind clear up. Trip too had straightened up at his station and was staring intently at the screen. "On the screen, Kuruya." Archer felt sorry he had to keep the specialist up way past the end of her shift, but he didn't want the risk that her replacement would miss a critical detail about what had being going on and not be as thorough in his search. "What do you read?" he asked.

"The twin planets have a moon, Captain. I am scanning the planets and the moon, but there are no findings." She paused, looked up from the science scanner "the shuttle is too small to be scanned at that distance, Captain. It would have to be exactly aligned with the sensors for us to find it. The absence of findings is most probably due to the fact we are too far away."

"How long before we can have surface scans?"

"Another three hours, sir. We'll have to scan at subspace speed." Archer sighed. It seemed the system was always farther away. "Helm, maintain trajectory. Communications, keep hailing the shuttle. Kuruya, keep scanning, let us know if you find anything." Archer slumped back in his chair. At some point, they had to find something, they just had to.

xx

Shran blinked a couple of times, realizing there was a beeping noise somewhere in the cabin. That had woken him up. He took another minutes to fully take in his surroundings, enjoying the comfort of sleeping on his side, his arm and leg wrapped around... the Vulcan?! He jumped up to his feet, shaking his limbs in disgust. Memories flooded back, of desperation at not being able to keep her warm, of fear she was going to hurt herself, and then he had been so very tired. So very tired. He had just given up the fight.

He started pacing around the cabin in anguish, his antennae writhing in self-loathing. How could he, Commander Shran of the Imperial Guard, have shared body heat with a Vulcan? He had been half out of his mind with fatigue, but that didn't excuse anything. What if anybody found out? How would he explain himself? He would be the laughing stock of the Imperial Guard, the Andorian who loved Vulcans. He rubbed his limbs again, trying to cleanse them of the residual heat. He hated himself for having taken pity on the Vulcan.

He shouldn't have. But she had been shaking so badly and looking so pitiful and he couldn't let her die so there had been no other choice, really. If anybody asked, he could explain that she had always acted honorably with the Andorians since P'Jem, not like the other Vulcans, so it was different. If anybody asked. It dawned on him that there had been no witness and nobody knew. And needed to know. He decided that his secret would die with him.

The beep started again, interrupting any further self-recriminating.

"Enterprise to Shran. Please respond". The call was muffled. "Enterprise to T'Pol, please respond."

"I'm here" Shran yelled in excitement at the voice. His communicator, where was his communicator! Shran tried to identify where the sound was coming from. He suddenly remembered dropping the communicator on his seat when he tried to contact Enterprise the cycle before. He finally found it wedged between deep inside the inner recess. "Shran to Enterprise, do you read me?" He waited anxiously.

"Archer here. Glad we finally found you. Do you know where you are?"

At the question, Shran looked out the shuttlecraft window, paused, then frowned. What did the pinkskin mean, did he know where he was? Of course, he didn't. Or he would have told him, no? He hid his annoyance "We're on an asteroid orbiting twin planets. How long before you get to us?" Archer looked over at Kuruya interrogating her with a glance, then at the screen. "We have identified a system with twin planets but there is no asteroid. There's a moon, and it is spinning rapidly."

"That would be the smallest moon I've even seen," Shran replied "let's hope it's the same planets. How long before you get to us?" he asked intently. Archer looked over at Travis, who raised four fingers up in the air. "It's going to be another four hours before we get to you. How is everybody else?"

Shran sighed. "The only ones alive are myself and Commander T'Pol. And she is injured. Badly." Shran waited for a reaction, but only silence emanated from the communicator. He went on "My aide is dead, like the other three crew members. But Archer, you need to get to us sooner. In another four hours, the temperature inside the shuttlecraft is going to deep below freezing and I don't think your Vulcan can survive another cold cycle." He was not going to humiliate himself again. And even if he did, he had a sense it would not be enough. Her condition had been deteriorating since the crash.

"Hold on, Shran" Archer signaled to Hoshi to pause the communication, turned to the intercom "Archer to Commander Tucker."

"Tucker here Captain."

"How fast can you push the engines?"

"I can give you warp 5.15 for about forty minutes or so. But I will have to cut back to impulse when we enter the system." Paxton was crazy enough to go to warp within a planetary system but that was not something sane people would attempt, especially with people on a small planetary body.

"Do so." Archer looked at Kuruya. "How much time will that gain us?"

"We'll get there in just under three hours. But, Captain, we should be able to use the transporter as soon as we're within the system, in a little over two hours."

Archer nodded "Good job, Kuruya." He could now see why T'Pol had selected the young woman. There was promise there. He signaled to Hoshi to pick up the com. "Shran, we'll be able to transport you in a little over two hours." Shran's initial reaction of pleasure quickly gave way to a vague sense of foreboding. Something was telling him this was not optimal. He looked over at T'Pol and realized what the nagging voice in his mind was.

"Captain, I'm not sure this is a good idea. I don't think the Commander can be transported." Archer sat heavily back in his chair. That was not expected. Reed spoke up from his station in a stage whisper. "Perhaps Dr. Phlox could beam to them instead."

Archer nodded. "Shran, we're going to transport Phlox to the shuttlecraft as soon as we're within transporter range. Keep your communicator open so that we can get the exact coordinates."

"Ok, and tell him to bring a space heater."

xx

Shran was waiting by T'Pol, careful not to be too close to the Vulcan, when he caught the shimmering of the transporter from the corner of his eye. The shapes quickly materialized into Dr. Phlox and Commander Tucker. As soon as Phlox had taken note of his surroundings, he rushed over to the prone form of T'Pol, mediscanner at the ready. Tucker took one look at T'Pol, saw that Phlox was ministering to her and there was no room to get any closer, and turned to Shran. "I came to see if I can get the atmospheric controls back up. If I can't, we'll beam down some power cells to heat up the place. Do you want to beam back to Enterprise?"

Shran shook his head. "Not until all crew members have been seen to." Even if these were not his crew, a captain always was last off his ship. After the dead bodies. Tucker nodded.

There was an unusual frown on Phlox's features as he scanned T'Pol's head. He turned to the rest of the body, still scowling. "Hmmm" the Denobulan doctor spoke to himself. He whipped out a hypospray and injected it directly between her ribs. T'Pol's eyes fluttered open and she stood silently staring at the doctor. He smiled at her, a small, constrained smile very much at odds with his usual mile-wide grin.

"Hello there. Do you know who I am?" she kept staring instantly at him. When he saw she was going to try and speak, Phlox put a finger on her lips. "Ssshhh. No need to speak. Blink once for yes, twice for no." he smiled again in a reassuring way.

T'Pol's stared at him as intently, then lowered her eyelids once, then twice. Phlox did not seem surprised or fazed by the admission. His face was expressionless as he replied. "I am Dr. Phlox, the Denobulan doctor on board Enterprise." Shran saw that Commander Tucker had stopped his diagnosis of the shuttle console and was staring at the doctor and T'Pol, a frown on his face.

"Now," Phlox went on in a singsong voice "I am afraid I cannot give you anything for the pain in your head. Otherwise, I may not be able to know when you need help. But there is something very important I need to ask you now. Ok?" He stopped talking, waiting. The eyelids went down once. "Good, good," the doctor smiled again. "I need you to tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad the pain in your head is. Now, the way we'll do it is that I will count the numbers, and when we get to the right one, just blink once, hmm?" he waited until T'Pol blinked that she understood.

Phlox went on "first, is the pain higher than five on a scale of 1 to 10?" the eyelids came down. "ok, then," Phlox sat back on his haunches. "is it five?..." there was no answer "six..." no answer "seven?..." no answer, "eight?..." the eyelids came down. Phlox frowned. "I'm really sorry, I cannot give you anything for the pain. But if the pain gets above eight, as soon as it does, I want you to blink three times. Do you think you can do that?" Phlox waited for T'Pol to blink once, then pulled his communicator out and stepped to a point of the shuttle where she couldn't really hear him. Even if she could, he knew it would be difficult for her to make sense of what he was saying.

"Phlox to Captain Archer"

"Archer here. How is she, doctor?"

"Things are not good, Captain," the doctor was clinical as he went on, rushing through everything he needed to convey "We cannot transport Commander T'Pol to Enterprise via the transporter. She would not survive. She needs emergency surgery, not something I can do here. She needs to be brought back to Enterprise but she shouldn't be moved, I don't know how we're going to do that. Right now I need a couple of medics to come down here. I am sending a list of materials to bring with them. Phlox out."

Archer felt like a prizefighter in a losing round. He turned to Reed, who was watching him with thinned lips. "Once you have the list from Phlox, have medical personnel beam down right away." He turned back to the intercom in his armchair arm, flipped it on "Archer to Tucker. Did you hear that?"

"I did, Captain. I am going over the environmental systems in the shuttle. I think I can keep the temperature from dipping below freezing. I'll check with Phlox whether that's sufficient."

"Fine, Commander. When you're done, I need you to join Ensign Mayweather, Specialist Kuruya, and Lieutenant Reed in the command center. We need to figure out how we're going to bring T'Pol back. Archer out." Archer turned to Reed. "I'll wake Kuruya up and tell her she needs to be back on the bridge. Please get MACO Ademoutsis, one of his areas of expertise is recovery of civilian personnel."


	7. Chapter 7

The dead occupants of the shuttle had been brought back to Enterprise and were waiting in the ship's morgue and Shran had left for some well-deserved food, shower and rest. Where it was not taken over by medical personnel, the shuttlecraft's cabin was full of engineering crew members. Commander Tucker set up the fifth heating unit in the shuttle, making sure the power cell had enough reserves to go for days. He straightened up and looked at the activity taking place in the center of the shuttle.

The seats had been removed and medical aides were busying themselves with setting up all kinds of equipment under Phlox supervision. Trip looked at the still form of T'Pol, which he still hadn't been able to get close to yet. Phlox hadn't even bothered to answer him when he had asked for access but the way he had looked at him had constricted Trip's heart. He had retreated, awkwardly mumbling about having to see to engineering things, unwilling to ask the question if she was going to die.

And now he was berating himself for not having asked, unsure if Phlox's stern look had been a warning that things were dire or simply a request to stay out of the way. The truth of it was that he was scared and he didn't know how to handle it. Seeing T'Pol like that was scaring him, head and shoulders locked in a rigid duraplastic contraption, unable to recognize Phlox or the people around her. Even if he wanted to, he would be unable to hold her hand, her arms were restrained along her body, anything to avoid a potential jolt. He felt useless and superfluous. And scared.

The shuttle was now warm enough for a Vulcan. Phlox had cut T'Pol's robes out of the way and she was snuggled under an isothermic blanket. She was in the process of being transferred from the floor onto an anti-grav stretcher. Phlox was overseeing the proceedings with the focus and care of a miniaturist. He stopped his team in the middle of their preparations and looked up to the inside of the shuttle.

"People, can I have everyone in the shuttle come here to help us, hmm?"

The engineering crew approached gingerly, getting close to the area Phlox was in. Trip stepped up also, though he wanted to be as far away as possible, where he could pretend none of this was happening. Within a few minutes, Phlox had positioned the crew members around T'Pol and given them precise instructions.

"Now" he said for the umpteenth time "it is critical, critical, that there be no bumps and no jostling. The transfer has to take place as if a mattress of air had just materialized under her and lifted her on the stretcher. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that there be no commotion." The ten crew members around her nodded in grim understanding.

"On the count of three" Phlox went on "we're going to lift her but only one half inch at a time. I'll give the count. And remember, no bumps and no shaking. Everybody ready? One, two, three."

Trip was amazed at the lightness of the contraption, though given that there were ten crew members lifting and her weight, it should have come as no surprise. They had lifted her a total of an inch and a half when an alert rang. "Blood pressure falling!" one of the aides shouted. "Stop!" Phlox yelled at the crew members. They stopped where they were, legs and thighs bent in an awkward position, unable to move a fingertip. Phlox stepped in between two of them, scanner aimed at T'Pol head, calling to his aides as results came in. "The anterior ciolpid vein is still holding, no further tear."

He addressed the men still crouched in an awkward position "It's going to be a few more minutes. Don't move." He called to the aides again "It must be the positional change. Johnson, prepare 10cc's of cordrazine just in case. Hopefully we won't have to use it. Let's wait until she stabilizes."

Trip felt the muscles in his thigh were going to give out, but like everyone else he just gritted his teeth and stayed put. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Phlox spoke again "Let's proceed, but we'll have to go even slower this time. On my count, follow my hand as I bring it up."

Phlox started raising his hand above the contraption holding T'Pol motionless, going at a snail pace. The team raising the stretcher followed his lead. "Blood pressure is holding" one of the aides called at regular intervals. It took a couple more minutes before screaming calves stopped screaming, shaking thighs stopped shaking, locked forearms and bent backs started relaxing as she was brought up to a more manageable height. Finally, the contraption was resting on the anti-grav stretcher. The engineering staff stepped away to caucus between themselves, leaving the medical staff to focus on the patient. Machines sprung up to life, their regular beeps providing a rhythmic background to the engineering team strategic meeting.

Phlox looked at the screens that were now telling him a fuller story than the limited hand-scanners. He frowned and pulled his communicator. "Phlox to Enterprise."

"Go ahead, Phlox" Archer replied.

"Captain, can you hail the Vulcans, see if they have a starship not too far from us. We need one with a healer on board."

Archer paused. He wished T'Pol and Phlox were in sickbay on the Enterprise. "Will let you know," he replied. On his left, Hoshi was already busy sending a subsignal out on Vulcan frequencies. "Is Trip around?" Archer went on.

"I'm right here, Captain."

"Good. Are you done with what you needed to do on the shuttle?"

"We're still analyzing readings from the diagnosticator and figuring out alternative options, but we should have an answer within the next few hours."

"Ok, meet me in the command center in three hours."

xx

Trip walked into the command center, Hess in tow. Archer was already there with Travis, Reed, Ademoutsis and Kuruya. The mood was subdued. Archer looked up. "Commander Tucker, what do you have?"

Trip squared his shoulders, walked over to the central console, Hess taking her place next to Ademoutsis. "As you know, he pointed to the screen in the center of the command table, showing the asteroid surface with the shuttle smashed against it, "The shuttle hit the surface of the moon at a 31 degree angle. By some miracle it didn't break on contact. The asteroid is made of a form of ... basalt?" Trip looked up inquiringly at Kuruya, who nodded in return "which melts at moderately high temperatures. The energy liberated by the impact was enough to fuse the side of the shuttle with the planet surface." He didn't need to add that otherwise they would only have found a cloud of debris slowly dissipating around the twin planets, if anything.

Trip went on "We looked at what it would take to bring the shuttle engines back online, and that would require a complete rip and replace. Even if we could bring the engines on line, there is a distinct probability that parts of the hull have partially melted with the rock and would tear upon lift-off. The shuttle would decompress immediately. We cannot use a tractor beam for the same reason." He waited until the team had digested the news.

"The shuttle door was on the side that is fused with the asteroid. The only means of egress is the airlock on the top of the shuttle. That is what we usually use when we dock with the ship, except that there is no option to dock here, no baffles. We could uninstall one of the outside airlock baffles from Enterprise and re-install it on the shuttle. Then we would have one of our shuttles dock to the airlock and we could transport T'Pol on board." Now that he had given them a seed of hope, he had to take it away. Trip took a deep breath "There are several issues. One is that the baffles cannot extend further than three meters, and cannot bend or flex, not without breaking. The recovery shuttle would have to maintain a stable position. That doesn't sound so bad but we have to remember that the recovery shuttle would be flying upside down."

"I could fly upside down and maintain position." Travis interrupted.

Archer nodded "I believe you could."

"It's not that simple" Trip interjected. "Because the shuttle is at listing at an angle of 31 degrees, the recovery shuttle would need to remain at the same angle and a distance of three meters. Upside down. We checked and there would be enough clearance from the surface of the planet only in one direction, and then there would only be a couple of meters between the shuttle and the surface."

Tucker stopped, letting it all sink in. That was not enough clearance to fly safely. A rush of dust on the asteroid surface would be enough to destabilize the shuttle and send the baffle careening into space. Now they understood how darn near impossible this all was. Time to drop the other shoe. "We considered doubling the baffle by putting two of them in a row, for a distance of six meters between both shuttles. But the other issue is the rapid spinning of the asteroid. The centripetal force decreases as the distance from the surface increases. Because the asteroid is so small, a difference of six meters means that the recovery shuttle and the asteroid won't be spinning at the same rate. Kuruya can give you the metrics. That would rip open the seam within twenty minutes, possibly less. And because of the medical situation, the extraction may take more than twenty minutes. There is no way to craft a stronger joint. Even at three meters from the surface, the centripetal force is going to be a hundred Kilonewton higher. The question is whether the shuttle can be flown in a way to counter the drag."

Trip looked inquiringly at Travis before staring down at the command screen again. "That is not the only issue, however. Because the disabled shuttlecraft has been cleared of all equipment and material, it is lighter than the recovery shuttle. There is a possibility that the baffles hold instead and that and the heavier shuttlecraft tears the lighter one off, bringing us back to problem number one."

This time he was done. He would wait to see what questions were raised before presenting the solution Kuruya and he had worked out. In case there may were other better options out there.

Archer turned to Travis. "Can you do this?"

The helmsman hesitated, his eyes like saucers, trying to process through everything that he had heard. "I could do each one separately. Maintain a shuttlecraft one or two meters from the ground is not an issue. Doing it while listing at a 31 degree angle... maintaining the angle is going to be difficult. Is there a way to anchor the shuttlecrafts to each other? perhaps steel bars? It wouldn't have to last long, just long enough to do the transfer. And give me some bracing. But the orbital force..." the young man went on "... the issue is that I am not sure how it's going to impact the shuttle and I may need the flexibility to fly in all directions. Being limited to a two meter clearance could be an issue..."

"If the ships are braced together, the orbital force won't be as big an obstacle" Archer thought out loud.

Trip butted back in. "We hadn't considered bracing the shuttles together, but that could be done." He thought back to the tether anchoring Columbia and Enterprise during his spacewalk. It would have been dangerous to anchor the ships more tightly together but it could be done, for a very short period.

"But then the weak point becomes the disabled shuttle" Reed interjected. "The force can rip it off the rock."

"As far as the disabled shuttle being ripped away" Trip countered "we had thought of that. We propose tethering it to the ground. If we put 15-ton steel cables here and there" he pointed at the image of the shuttle "it should anchor it enough to counter the shear from the recovery shuttle. It won't keep it together for hours on end, but we don't need hours."

"Is there anything you can do to give me more maneuvering room?" Travis asked.

Trip rolled his tongue in his cheek, looking at how the shuttle was embedded in the surface of the asteroid. "There's not much we can do, short of digging out part of that overhang by the shuttle."

"Any reason why we can't dig it out?" Archer asked the room. "If you can give me the extra room, I'll take it." Travis quickly butted in. Archer nodded. There was a momentary silence as the assembled crew members wrapped their head around the idea.

"I supposed it's possible," Trip hazarded, looking to Kuruya for confirmation.

She started talking in turn "Seismic refraction indicates the rock that the asteroid is made of is rippable. Digging is not going to require specialized equipment, but it is going to require mine excavators."

"We should be able to replicate some fair-size excavators," Trip proposed.

Archer nodded "This could work. Anybody else have a better plan?" silence was his only reply. "Ok, Trip, how long is this all going to take?"

Trip mulled things over. "It will take twelve hours to de-install and re-install the baffle. Same amount of time to tether the shuttle to the surface, possibly longer. Replicating the excavators will take at least a day, and a couple of days for digging ..."

"We don't have a couple of days" Archer cut him off. "A Vulcan ship will be here in a day and a half with a healer on board. We need it done by then."

Archer turned to Ademoutsis. "How will you do the recovery?" The MACO sighed in return. "We've been talking to Dr. Phlox. If it were just a matter of pick up and fly off, this would be a no-brainer, Captain. But given the medical situation, doing a recovery through the top airlock is not ideal. This is a tight space and we're under strict medical orders to keep Commander T'Pol completely immobile throughout the transfer. We're going to find a way to do it, but it will take more time than we'd usually take."

Archer looked around at the table. "You've heard, whatever we have in place has to be good enough to last long enough for the recovery. Ensign Sato, I want you to organize teams: one for the baffles, one for the digging, one for the tethering. Lieutenant Reed will be in charge of the digging, Hess can oversee the tethering. Grab anyone you need from Sciences or anywhere else for that matter. Use Chef if you have to, but we have to make the timeline."

Archer turned to Travis "I want you on the surface with the recovery shuttlecraft, doing so many training runs that you can tell where the planet is spinning before it knows it itself."

"Aye, Captain." Travis' face was serious.

"Ademoutsis, you're in charge of recovery, I want you and your team to start practicing until it's muscle memory, see how much you can shave off the entire process without endangering anyone. Kuruya, work with the digging team, find a way to get it done faster. Trip, I'm going to need you to help me keep an eye on everything. Everyone's dismissed. We have work to do."

The team filed out of the command center, already busy on the next steps. Archer frowned. He wished there was some way he could be useful on the ground, instead of sitting up on the bridge, making sure all the pieces worked in harmony. Perhaps he would go with Travis on a couple of practice runs, it made sense to have a replacement pilot if anything happened.


	8. Chapter 8

"We've got it" Hess announced from outside the airlock.

"Roger" Trip replied from the mike in his EV suit. "Travis, can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear. I'm turning the corner, will be there in a couple of minutes." True to his word, the nose of the shuttlecraft poked around the nacelle. Trip, Hess and two other engineers in EV suits were waiting around the airlock, holding on to the baffle.

All Trip could see of Travis was the heavy EV suit protecting him from the vacuum of space. After much deliberation, they had decided to use the shuttle to retrieve the baffles, it was easier than all other options and Travis was hungry for as much practice time as he could get. The shuttlecraft hovered close by, the side hatch opened. Trip looked over at Hess and the other two.

"Ok, on my mark, set, go!" Four EV suits pushed off the main ship, not so hard that they would slam into the shuttlecraft, hard enough that they would reach it. The engineer on the front left was the first one to make mark with the shuttle. He grabbed the edge of the door, which helped guide his counterpart to the other side. It took a couple of tries as it was a tight fit unless the baffle was exactly vertical, but pretty soon the four of them and the baffle were inside the shuttle, and Travis turned back to the shuttle bay. They waited in the shuttle until the bay repressurized. Trip unlatched his helmet, soon followed by the others.

"OK people, let's see what else we can bring to the surface. Travis, get out of your EV suit and meet us back here in thirty minutes." Tucker stepped out of the shuttle. He needed to go to the command center, confer with Archer, make sure teams two and three were on track. He also needed to sleep, but he would do that in the shuttle, on his way to the surface.

Trip crossed the shuttle bay, exited into the main hangar. On his left, Ademoutsis and a team of MACOs were busy climbing up a pile of crates, holding a stretcher between them, lifting and angling the stretcher to fit it at an impossible angle into a tight corner.

Trip looked away. He had been shoving down all thoughts and concerns about T'Pol into the far reaches of his mind. He could not afford to think about her, to let any concern work his way through his conscious mind, or he might not be able to function. It was all going to work. There was no ifs and buts about it. It was going to work. Walk in the park. It would work.

xx

Trip walked onto the bridge, still in his EV suit. There was a skeleton crew, he hardly knew any of them except for Hoshi and Archer. Archer looked over at him "How are we doing?"

"We finished disassembling the airlock baffle, are bringing it down to the surface. Any word from the teams down there?" Trip had been busy with the airlock set-up, he hadn't had time to check with the teams.

"Hess reports Team 2 is on track. They've dug two holes for the anchors for the tethers. Reed is overseeing the replicator. The rest of Team 3 is on the surface, waiting to assemble. Malcolm says Kuruya has found a way to cut the time in half. I'll find out when I get to the shuttle bay."

"I am meeting Travis there in a half-hour. We're going back to the surface. I came to see if there were any specific supplies that were urgently needed. Not that we have much space left."

Archer was already getting out of his chair "Travis won't be going. I am piloting the next flight. Travis needs to take a break and we need a standby pilot."

Trip nodded. Travis had been shuttling between Enterprise and the asteroid non-stop, bringing down the tethers for the disabled ship, bringing equipment for the digging team, bringing technicians and engineers and crewmen down, bringing food for the medical team, bringing back broken supplies, broken equipment, spent personnel. He was practically living aboard the shuttle, learning the asteroid and its rotation, until the time when he could do practice runs, upside down and tethered to the broken shuttle. Giving him a break made sense and Archer was the best pilot on board outside of Travis.

When Jonathan was close enough that he could speak in a whisper, Trip asked softly "Any word from Phlox?"

"No." Archer looked kindly at his friend. "It seems we're at somewhat of a status quo." May it last, he thought to himself. "We can check with him when we go down."

"Ok, let me talk to Hoshi, see where we stand. Meet you at the shuttle?"

Archer strode off the bridge. "Hoshi, you have the con. You and Commander Tucker work out the supplies chain. I'll be in the shuttle bay."

xx

"Pinkskin!"

Archer turned around at the shout. He had forgotten all about Shran. Well, not quite all, but their entire focus and energy had been on getting T'Pol from the surface, he really didn't have time to deal with the Andorian. On the other hand Shran was the reason T'Pol was still alive and he guessed that meant he owed him, in Shran's strange debt-ticker universe.

"Commander Shran" Archer replied, knowing his long-suffering tone was lost on the Andorian.

"I've been talking to your crew, they told me what's going on. Why didn't you wake me up?" Archer looked up at Shran in surprise. Didn't they just pick him up from a crashed shuttle a few hours before? "I thought you'd need the rest" he brushed him off.

"Rest? I've had more rest than I need, stuck on that shuttle for two days waiting for you to find us." The Andorian's antennae took the sting out of his tone. "I'm told that we're running against the clock to get your Vulcan off the planet?"

"That's about right," Archer replied, pensively looking at Shran. He still couldn't quite figure out how it had come to be that he had saved T'Pol's life. Given how badly wounded she was, he wouldn't have expected her to make it when the only one available to help was an Andorian. Shran seemed to sense where Archer's thoughts were headed, suddenly became quiet, almost nervous.

"If that's the case, you can't afford to have me sleeping in the guest quarters" he said sternly.

Archer looked at him again, pondering. "What can you help with?" he asked, inwardly he was thinking that Shran's natural leadership abilities and command skills would make him well-suited to lead one of the teams. Or perhaps replace him on the bridge, but he didn't think Starfleet would see eye-to-eye with him on that.

"Do you have an Andorian EV suit?"

Archer frowned. "Not unless you brought one with you. We can replicate one for you but the replicator is going to be busy for the next day or so."

"Then I'll have to be helpful here on the ship."

Archer had a sudden idea. "You can help Hoshi with the logistics. We're kind of all hands on deck on the surface right now and I only have a skeleton crew on the bridge. She could use the help." He saw Shran bristle, but the Andorian surprised him again. "I'll help however I can."

"Good. I'll be back in a few hours." Archer strode off towards the shuttle bay.

xx

Trip was relieved when the shuttlecraft touched down. Even though he was seating in the co-pilot seat and had ample legroom, the shuttle felt stuffed to the gills between the heavy equipment and a half-a-dozen crew in their EV suits, and the hour-ride down seemed to take twice as long. And with Archer piloting, he hadn't been able to kick back and go to sleep, like he would have with Travis.

"Helmets on." Archer's voice rang through the cabin. As if they were not warm enough already, thought Trip. The crewmembers checked their EV suits latches and seals in pairs, as per regulations. Jonathan and he checked each other out.

"Preparing to vent" this time Archer's voice was coming over the mikes in the EV suits. "Venting" They heard the air being chased through the underfloor conduits, before the shuttle door opened, in a ballet that prevented anyone from being suddenly sucked out of the aircraft. A strong breeze, that none of them could feel through the EV suits, rattled the lighter equipment before the stillness of space prevailed.

Hess and the crew were already angling the airlock baffle out of the shuttle door. Personnel from team 2 and 3 came over to pick the supplies requested by their team leaders. The rapid rotation of the asteroid provided an average gravity, though the speed at which the planets streaked through around them was disconcerting.

"I have one hour before I need to make the run back" Archer informed Trip. Shuttle runs to the surface had been scheduled at regular intervals that gave the EV-suited personnel enough time to go back to Enterprise and refill their oxygen tanks, shower and rest while their replacements were down on the asteroid.

Trip nodded. "I am good for a couple of runs, Captain. I'll go and see what the teams are up to." With that, he pushed off and walked towards the nose of the disabled shuttle and the EV suits working in close proximity. Archer could see they were in the process of implanting the first tether anchor. Three to go still.

He turned his helmet to check the heavy machinery taking shape right by the rear of the shuttle. There were a half-dozen EV suits working on the equipment, dwarfed by the size of the machine. Lieutenant Reed was sending the excavator down in sections and they were assembling it directly on the asteroid, which cut on the build time. As Reed and Kuruya had told him, they had pared everything down to the essential functionality, stripping from the plans any redundancy, any optional features, anything geared towards re-use. As Malcolm put it, they needed something to dig once, the operators would be in EV suits, and they would never use the equipment again. With those changes, the excavator would be ready in half the time.

He looked to the other side of the shuttle at the bluff created by the crash and towering well over the shuttle. Kuruya was still working on shaving time off the actual digging, trying to see if they could get away with half a job, only taking enough of the top of the bluff off to give Travis some more maneuvering room. It might still take more than a day to do what they had in mind but anything was better than nothing, and he'd gladly take it. So would Travis.

In the meantime, he had to talk to Phlox. He thumbed his communicator. "Hoshi, can you transport me up then transport me back down inside the disabled shuttle." It would have been more efficient to transport directly from Enterprise, but he needed the flight practice.

xx

Archer took off his helmet as soon as he rematerialized. Apart from the heat, what struck him was the sense of quiet on the disabled shuttle. Outside on the asteroid, it was all bustle and energy, dozens of EV suits striding across the asteroid, dust from rock being hammered into, visual ballet of bodies and motions and equipment, even if the sound was swallowed by the laws of vacuum. Inside, the atmosphere was clean and tranquil, there was the antigrav stretcher in the center of the shuttle, a couple of humans adjusting some kind of medical equipment and one Denobulan, who spotted Archer and walked to him. "Captain" Phlox nodded.

"How is she?"

The doctor frowned. "I know you're doing all you can to bring her back to Enterprise, but we're racing against time, Captain. We're dealing with a catastrophic head injury, the only reason she's still alive is because of Vulcan's constitution and possibly the fact that the shuttle got very cold right after the crash."

"How much longer can you wait" Archer's voice was muted.

The doctor shook his head "I really don't know at this point. She has a blood clot blocking a tear in the anterior ciploid vein and that's the only reason she's still alive. If the blood clot gets dislodged, she'll die of a cerebral hemorrhage. If it doesn't get removed soon, necrosis will set in. I need to operate as soon as possible."

"I thought you were waiting for the Vulcan healer?" Archer asked.

"The only reason I asked for a Vulcan healer is because there's time for one to arrive before she's back on Enterprise. Otherwise I would do the surgery myself." Phlox took a breath. "But a Vulcan healer will make it a lot easier and less risky."

"Is she awake?" Archer tried craning his neck but he couldn't make much beyond the contraption that seemed to envelop her.

"She's in too much pain not to be, and I can't give her painkillers because it could kill her, but she's quite out of it. Though now that her secondary injuries are healing, not as much as I would like her to be."

"Can I see her?" Archer felt that question legitimately belonged to Trip but she was a friend of his too, one that he had come to care for a lot. He was a little disappointed when Phlox shook his head. "She doesn't really recognize anyone, Jon, because of the brain injury and the blood clot. It's impacting an area similar to the Broca area in Humans, which means she can't speak. Recognition of physical features is similarly impacted. All it would do is tire her out, and that's not something I can afford."

Archer nodded. "I will be back on the bridge in a couple of hours. Anything you need?"

Phlox harrumphed. "Get that Vulcan healer here and get us on board."


	9. Chapter 9

"Captain!" Archer opened one eye, realized he was still in the command chair. Hoshi was staring at him and Shran was grinning from ear to ear. "I wasn't sleeping" Archer said.

"Yeah, and I don't have blue skin" Shran replied. Archer shot him a malevolent look. Let the Andorian push too much, and he would remind him he had saved a Vulcan's life. He had noticed that Shran became nervous whenever too much was made of T'Pol's survival.

"Actually, Captain" Ensign Sato smoothed away the budding tension, "I was just going to bring your attention to the fact none of the teams has had any rest and we're coming on forty-eight hours for some of them." She didn't add 'like you' but it was somewhat obvious.

Archer frowned. It was the beginning of alpha shift again, and he couldn't remember when he was not on the bridge last.

Shran scowled. "That's much too long, pinkskin, uh, Captain. You must have walking zombies around on the surface by now. Andorian squads never let their men go on for that long without a mandatory rest period. Not unless we're at war."

They were in a war of sorts, against time, Archer reflected, but Shran was right. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. At least falling asleep on the bridge was only embarrassing. But if someone on one of the teams handling heavy equipment was not sharp, they could end up with casualties.

"Do we have enough bench depth that the work can keep going on?" he asked Hoshi. Not all crew had experience with EV suits. She nodded. "We won't be able to fully staff the teams, but we can rotate them one third at a time."

"If you could replicate an Andorian EV suit, I'm worth two men." Shran interjected. Archer looked at him bleary-eyed, then remembered. "The replicator is free now. Ensign Sato, who do we have that's not busy with the recovery effort and knows how to operate the replicator?" The huge mine excavator, or whatever quasi-excavator the equipment Kuruya and Reed had devised and built, was now on the asteroid surface, had been there for three or four hours already. The next check-in point for all the teams was a couple of hours away.

"Once you've identified the crew member, have them meet with Shran and replicate an Andorian EV suit." He needed to rest. "Send word to the teams that they have to come back to Enterprise to rest in third shifts, starting with the team leaders, right away. Captain's orders. Rest period is a minimum of two hours." Archer got up, started walking away "I'm following my own orders, I'll be back in two hours. Oh, and Hoshi, you're next."

xx

"Roger." Trip flipped his EV suit channel closed, trotted back to where half of team 2 was waiting to grab the tether and start anchoring the disabled shuttle. Since he was not strictly speaking a team leader, he had sent a reluctant Hess back to the ship for the mandatory rest period and declared he would take over for her. She would be back in four hours, including an hour to shuttle to Enterprise and an hour to shuttle back. Travis had been resting in between flights, he also was not taking a rest period. That, the only other pilot that needed practice time was asleep on Enterprise.

Trip spoke into his mike "Rostoff is going to shoot the tether over the shuttle. I need two people to jump on the cable as soon as it hits the ground and prevent it from slamming back into the shuttle. Watch out, that thing is heavy. Everybody else, we have to make way."

The six crew members in EV suits acknowledged their understanding in the mikes. Nodding in an EV suit was somewhat of a waste, unless one learned to nod with one's helmet. Talking was much easier and less energy intensive.

"Make way! Make way!" Trip shouted the team away from the landing point. Two crew members stayed behind, far enough to be out of the immediate line of fire, close enough to jump on the cable when it landed.

As soon as Trip was safely away, he gave the order to Rostoff, waving his arm up and down for emphasis. Rostoff was having all the fun, well, Malcolm and Rostoff had all the fun, repurposing a bazooka into a cable launcher. He saw the brief flare of light that indicated Rostoff had fired, any sound absorbed by the vacuum of space. Then two EV suits were running and jumping on the ground, landing in belly flops that would have been painful but for the suits.

"I got it!" Addir yelled in the mike, making everyone on the team shrink away from the sound. He and Johnson got up, covered in stellar dust, dragging the ton-heavy cable between them. The rest of the team rushed in to lend a hand. It took close to an hour of pulling, splicing, measuring, swearing and sweating, but eventually the end of the cable was wound in the anchor pre-sunk in the rock.

Now they could start winching the cable from both ends. Trip looked over at the team. He was out of breath, exhausted by the physical effort and sheer fatigue. Johnson tapped him on the shoulder. "Commander! Your oxygen tank is low. You need to get back to the ship." That explained why he was feeling like crap. Trip looked around for another officer he could delegate to. Rostoff was on the other side of the shuttle and he already had his hands full tethering the shuttle. Hess was not around. All they had left to do was winch the cable.

"Let's get this done quickly, then" Trip talked into his mike "Everyone, we're going to start winching. Rostoff, are you ready?"

"We're ready on this side, waiting for you guys to stop playing around." Rostoff's voice came through their helmets.

"Hahaha, remind me of that joke come next evaluation time. Ok, on the count of three! One … two… three…" The teams on both sides of the shuttles flipped on a switch and the anchor started turning, winching the tether in between them. When the tension became too great, the motor would automatically stop. Everyone next to him was looking at the slow rotation of the cable.

Suddenly, with a suddenness that almost stopped hearts beating in chests and without the benefit of any warning sound, the anchor ripped from the ground and spun through the air straight at the shuttle, the cable coiling beneath it like some giant king cobra before it released and the anchor banged soundlessly into the shuttle, denting it, while the tether fell back to the ground, right on top of the standing crew. Screams resonated through the mikes, adding a chilling dimension to the scene.

"Mayday! Mayday!" Trip screamed in his suit at Rostoff. "The cable went. We have wounded." He rushed to the three EV suits pinned to the ground by the heavy tether, praying that the suits had held. They had, but two of the forms were unconscious and the other's helmet was full of blood. "Enterprise! We had an accident. Three to transport as soon as you can!" Trip yelled in his communicator. There was complete mayhem, EV suits running from all over to the scene of the accident.

"We've got it, Trip!" Archer replied, to Trip's surprise, he thought Jonathan was sleeping. "We're transporting them. I want you and the entire Team 2 back on Enterprise ASAP, stat."

Phlox cut into the communication "What was that Commander?!" The doctor sounded furious. "Which part didn't you get about no jolts, hmm?! Lucky for us we have an antigrav stretcher or there would no longer be the need for a recovery."

xx

"Come in"

Trip stepped into Captain's Archer ready room, standing more or less at attention. The past four hours of sleep had done wonders and he felt like a new man.

"Commander," He could tell from the set of his mouth that Jonathan was pissed. He cautiously decided to let him speak first. Archer looked at him with a smile but his eyes were furious "What inspired you to disobey a direct order?"

Trip was speechless. What was Jon talking about? "A direct order?"

"All team leaders were to come back to Enterprise for a two-hour mandatory rest period."

"Ah, well, uh, as I'm not really a team leader—"

"-you decided it didn't apply to you? To what end? So that we could have three men in Sickbay while Phlox is not available and have to start the tethering again from scratch?"

"How's that related -" Trip started lamely. He was not able to finish that sentence either.

"Do you really need me to spell it out?"

"Well" Trip fell silent, frowning. Was it related? He simply had decided to do things quickly because his oxygen was running low and he couldn't think of someone to replace him. "What I mean is, it didn't happen because I was tired."

"Didn't it, Commander? I've debriefed your team. Johnson told you your oxygen tank was running low. The right decision would have been to name a replacement and head back to the ship."

"But there was no replacement available. Rostoff was on the other side, Hess was on Enterprise and every one else was needed for the tethering."

"Hess could have come down."

"That would have taken another hour."

"She could have transported down."

There was a long silence as realization dawned on Trip. He finally admitted, "I didn't think of that."

"Exactly, you didn't think. Because you were overtired. If you had not been exhausted, you would have figured out that Hess could be down on the ground quickly and that even if she didn't an hour wait was better than jeopardizing the recovery."

Trip looked down. Archer sighed, holding the bridge of his nose. "The issue is, you're used to getting away with pretty much everything because you can fix it later. But there are things that cannot be fixed. What if someone had died? What if you had blown our only chance of recovering T'Pol? How would you feel then, standing here?"

Archer turned to the window, staring at the stars. "Lucky for us we have time to re-tether the shuttle before the Vulcan ship arrives. Everyone on Team 2 has had four hours of rest and Hess will finish the tethering. I've asked Shran to take over the coordination of the recovery efforts on the planet. You can focus on installing the baffles."

Trip didn't really have an issue with what Archer was doing, he deserved it. "The baffles are already in place" he informed him.

"Then, perhaps you can help Hess on Team 2. Dismissed." Archer didn't turn around until he heard the swoosh of the closing door. He felt bad for having dressed down Trip like that, but Trip was too often trying to put one over whoever was in charge. When he became captain, he would be the one in charge. He had to learn how to work on the side of authority.

xx

Archer flipped the shuttle upside down, flying closely over the disabled shuttle, then brought it to a standstill, a few meters up, and at an angle. Travis and he were taking turns preparing for the time when one of them would have to hold the shuttle in a precise listing position for twenty minutes or longer. This was just a taste of what it would be like. They couldn't get low enough until there was more clearance from the bluff next to the shuttle.

Team 3 was hard at work on the bluff, which was starting to show a shuttle length depression in its middle. Kuruya had calculated exactly how much they needed to dig to provide the recovery shuttle with the room it required, no more. Now that the disabled shuttle was solidly tethered to the ground, Teams 1 and 2 had joined the effort and things were going somewhat faster. Still, it was slow progress. The Vulcan ship with a healer on board could show up at any time now, and then they would have to make choices.

Archer lowered the shuttle another few yards, just to get a sense of things. He saw the EV suits on the ground look up at the shuttle and knew they were worried he was too low. He had to play it safe, they couldn't afford more casualties or more time wasted. He banked sharply to the left and brought the shuttle back up, heading for the ship. Travis could fly the next run. It would take another four to five hours to clear out enough of the bluff for a real practice run. At that time he would go again.

"Ensign Sato to Captain Archer" Archer flicked the intercom, wondering what exactly happened to have Hoshi reach out to him on a practice run. "Archer here. What is it?"

"The Vulcan starship is hailing us, sir."

Archer swore inwardly. Typical. If they had been ready early, the Vulcan ship would have been late. "Tell them I'll be back on board in an hour and arrange for an intercept. And have Lieutenant Reed get back to the bridge. Ask Specialist Kuruya to join us there also." Now was the time to start talking options.


	10. Chapter 10

"Healer Telek," Archer nodded at the tall and thin man who had just materialized on the transporter platform, his snow white hair a testament to his age.

"Captain Archer" the man replied without a drop of emotion on his face, "where is the patient?" This time Archer didn't mind the Vulcan lack of social graces. It meshed perfectly with his own agenda.

"She's down on the surface, in the shuttle. I thought you'd might want to settle in your quarters first, but otherwise we could transport you directly there."

"Please transport me. My quarters will still be there when I return."

Archer nodded. "Logical. Ensign Sato, if you please." The man disappeared in a shimmering of lights. Archer exhaled deeply. Outside of T'Pol, perhaps T'Pau and maybe Soval, he really was no fan of Vulcans.

Telek materialized in the shuttle, noted with a degree of surprise the two MACOs by the airlock in the ceiling, then saw the stretcher and walked over. An effusive Phlox was walking towards him. "Healer Telek! I'm so happy you came."

Telek hardly gave him a glance, his gaze focused on the still form on the stretcher. "I read the diagnostic pad you sent, Doctor. I need to assess the true extent of the synaptic functioning."

"By all means, Healer." Phlox stepped aside and Ademoutsis seeing that he was no longer occupied came over "Doctor, we need to take out the cabinets along the aft walls, that will give us more torque" he said "do you think that would be okay?"

Phlox and Telek stared back at him in puzzlement. "Why would that not be okay" Phlox finally asked.

"It's going to make some noise, and I know you don't want to jostle T'Pol" Ademoutsis explained.

"How exactly are you planning to take the cabinets off? With a sledgehammer?" Phlox was nonplussed. How could taking down a cabinet move the shuttle?

"No, sir" Ademoutsis was inured to that kind of questioning from civilians "but it's going to be noisy and I thought perhaps that would be an issue."

Phlox looked interrogatively at Telek, who looked up from where he had his hand on the psionic points on T'Pol's face. "There is nothing wrong with her auditory nerves" he said, "the noise in itself will not have an adverse impact on her condition, but the stress it precipitates may. There are ways to block the noise from reaching the auditory nerves."

Phlox nodded gravely. "The solution didn't need to be intrusive. "How long will it take?" he asked Ademoutsis.

"No more than a couple of hours. Then I'll go back to Enterprise to practice with the team." Ademoutsis shrugged. "We're ready already, we could proceed with the recovery right now, but the extra time will helps us take it to the next level."

xx

Kuruya and Reed were deep in discussion when Archer entered the command center. He had tasked them with finding a way to dig through the bluff faster than current estimates of sixteen hours of digging, which was just to get to the minimum clearance Kuruya had calculated. Now that Telek was on board sixteen hours seemed way too long. Only the remote risk of a catastrophic event prevented him from flying a shuttle in and retrieving T'Pol right away. There had to be a point when the risk balanced the hours.

Kuruya looked up when he came in, obviously preoccupied. It meant she didn't have an answer yet. Archer looked over at Reed. He knew that the science part of the question was beyond Malcolm but his tactical officer had a nose for thinking through and preparing for the worst. "Healer Telek is on the surface" Archer informed them.

Reed slapped a hand on the center console in frustration. "We should have replicated two excavators, the job would go twice as fast."

"And the second excavator would be ready within hours of the digging being completed" Kuruya calmly countered. Archer wondered if she modeled her dispassionate attitude on her Commander. "What other options do we have?" he asked "there are always other options."

"Short of blowing up the darn bluff," Reed was talking half to himself "there are no good options."

"Blowing up the bluff?" Archer asked. There was something there that made sense to him.

Reed realized he was taking him seriously "We can't really do that" he hastened to add. "The shock wave could send the shuttle careening away or simply destroy it."

"That's if we fire on it with Enterprise canons" Archer replied "but is there a way we could blow up enough of the bluff and all we'd have to do is cart the dirt away?"

"That's how mining operations operate" Kuruya jumped in "but we didn't use that approach because the impact of the explosives could play havoc on the shuttle."

"What if we used less powerful explosives? Unless there would be a way to protect the shuttle?" Archer had an image of Reed and him shielding themselves from the Romulan mine. It was true they had been sent tumbling over for a number of miles, but that was because the shields were not attached to anything. "Like a shield of some sorts." he added.

Reed perked up. "We could create some kind of magnetic shield, the dirt and everything else would just bounce off it. But not the size of a shuttle."

"It doesn't have to extend the whole length of the shuttle" Kuruya pointed out, "we could move it around to where the explosion takes place. And still keep the excavator going during that time."

"Yes, I can see that." Reed had a faraway look in his eyes, they were now talking weapons and defenses, stuff he knew a thing or two about.

Archer could see the wheels spinning in his head. "I'll let the two of you at it. How long do you think before we have something we can use?"

"No more than a few hours, Captain" Reed replied. "Once that's in place, we should be able to dig twice as fast."

"You have four hours" Archer told them as he walked away.

xx

Hoshi stepped into the mess hall, feeling as if she were staggering from fatigue. She had been the only contact on Enterprise for all the teams for the last two shifts, now that Shran was overseeing the operations and with Archer putting in practice flights every few hours. Team 2 had reported that the shuttles were successfully tethered, the baffles had been reinforced by Trip and his team, and there was not much happening with the digging except the need to dig more and longer, and she could escape for a quick bite and perhaps five minutes of sitting down without being crunched up over her headphones.

It was late in the daily cycle and the tables were mostly empty, the room half-bathed in darkness. As she was turning to sit down, she noticed a figure seating alone at a corner table in the darker side of the mess hall. Travis! She hurried over to his table, glad to reconnect with her companion in arms.

"Do you mind if I join you?" she had already sat down. The question was purely a polite opening. Uncharacteristically, Travis didn't reply. He just nodded and went back to staring at his now empty tray. Hoshi figured he was exhausted, like everyone else on the ship. Those that were not directly on the teams were pulling double shifts doing the work that their comrades would usually be doing. And Travis had been constantly back and forth to the planet.

"Rough day?" she was asking purely to establish contact. They all were having rough days these days.

"I don't know if I can do it, Hoshi."

"What?" Hoshi was trying to figure what Travis was talking about when he looked squarely at her and she finally realized how very subdued he was.

"I don't know if I can fly the recovery shuttle."

"What do you mean? Did you get hurt? Did anything happen during the practice runs?" and if so, why hadn't anyone told her.

Travis hastened to explain "No, not at all. It's just, I'm not sure I can do it."

Hoshi stared at Travis, at a loss. There was no doubt about his abilities as a pilot, so what was it he was trying to tell her? She decided to wait and let him speak. After a couple of minutes, he leaned over the table towards her "I have to fly upside down at an angle in a stationary position for twenty minutes, with orbital drag and a mountain of dirt way too close to my tail. It's not that I can't do it, but if anything happens, everyone on the shuttle will die. And it will be my fault." He shook his head again. "I don't think I can do it."

"But they all know the risk. Nobody will blame you if something happens" Hoshi needed to find a way to convince Travis to pilot the shuttle. She had complete faith in his abilities and he was the only one who could do it. What if he didn't, what would they do then?

"How would you feel if you were the one who killed Phlox and T'Pol and Ademoutsis and a handful of MACOs? Uh? and the Vulcan healer." Travis shook his head, looking down at his tray again. "I'd rather someone else be the one."

Hoshi could see his point. It was a huge amount of responsibility for a junior officer. At least they had a solution "I guess Captain Archer will have to do it, then" she replied.

"I'm a better pilot than Archer," Travis scoffed.

"Then what you're saying is that if Archer flies, there's a higher chance that they'll all die?"

Travis looked at her for the longest time, then he nodded slightly.

"Then you don't have a choice, do you?" Hoshi was getting emotional. "You're the only one who can fly the recovery shuttle."

It took another long silence, and then Travis nodded again. Suddenly he got up "I need to keep training" and he hurried out of the mess hall. Hoshi looked at him cross the door with a pang in her heart. She had forgotten how dangerous the recovery was, and the stakes that went with it.

xx

Travis saw that the bluff was going down fast on the surface. He flipped the shuttle upside down, and waited, slanted at exactly 31 degrees, feeling the drag and keeping his eye on the bluff. He could see the airlock down on top of the shuttle and he almost had enough clearance from the bluff to reach it easily. He lowered the shuttle a few more meters, feeling the blood rush to his head, but the g-suit maintained his homeostatic balance. He wouldn't black out. He let the minutes go by, adjusting his position as if he was really tethered to the baffles, feeling the infinitesimal movements of the planet below, the drag on the shuttle.

Below him, puffs of dust revealed the explosions going on down on the surface. The forcefield protecting the shuttle flickered as it was hit by dust and debris. Travis saw that a couple of rocks landed beyond the forcefield and hit the shuttle. Phlox must be having a fit in there. But this was as wide as Reed and Kuruya could make the forcefield without weakening it. Not in the time they had.

Travis smiled as he caught sight of the EV suit with antennae on the ground. That was Shran, overseeing the dig. The figure standing next to him must be Trip and the smaller EV suit probably belonged to Hess. As he watched, he saw the two figures step away from the Shran suit, in different directions. Trip was going to where the excavator was being manned by six EV suits. He gestured as he walked, obviously speaking in his mike, and three of the suits started rushing to where the explosive had just detonated.

The Hess suit was already on its way there. She stopped and leaned her head forward then looked up again and gestured at something out of his field of vision. Then he saw it lumbering behind a mountain of dirt, one of the loaders. It was like watching an anthill at work, smooth and efficient, and busy.

His twenty minutes were almost up. Travis took a glance at the flight record, saw that he had not deviated from the angle or the coordinates for the past twenty minutes. He breathed a sigh of relief. All he had to remember was that he could feel the shuttle, he didn't have to focus so hard on the instrumentation panel and everything would be fine.

If only he could keep that in mind when they did the actual recovery… He turned the nose of the shuttle towards the star and took off. As he did, he remembered that he should have checked how close to the bluff his tail was. He had been flying higher than needed, so it was still fine, but if it had been the recovery day it could have been a disaster. He would go back to Enterprise, rest, and come right back down, until he didn't forget any of those details.

xx

"Phlox to Captain Archer." Hoshi turned her seat around, looking at Archer who looked back at her, his hand hovering over the intercom. Was this the call they had both feared? "Archer here."

"We can't wait any longer, Captain!" the Denobulan's voice was strident "T'Pol's metabolic rate is dropping. We need to bring her back to the ship right now."

"Ok, doctor, give us a minute"

"A minute is all we have. We're running out of time!"

Phlox shut off the intercom, turned to look at Telek. The healer still had his hand on T'Pol's face, where he had jumped up as soon as the medical alert sounded. After a few more minutes, he straightened, nodded at Phlox. "I have stabilized her but I do not expect that this will be for more than a couple of hours. When is the recovery happening?"

"I'll reach out to Captain Archer again in twenty minutes if we still haven't heard from him." Phlox couldn't help but reflect the healer had been extremely patient for the past six hours. He himself would not have taken the delay with as much equanimity.

Telek looked at him as if he had heard that last thought "While the need for haste is great, the need for a safe recovery is even greater," the Healer gravely said.

xx

"Captain Archer to Commander Shran."

"Yes, Captain,"

"We need to transport T'Pol right away."

Shran sighed, that was what he had been afraid of. He gestured to Trip, who came trotting by. Shran put his helmet directly against Trip's so he could talk without the entire unit hearing what he had to say. "We have to stop digging. We need to do the recovery now."

He saw the Human blanch, knew exactly why. Only Humans didn't have senses well enough developed to tell who was mating whom. But there was no time for emotional turmoil. Shran went on "It will take an hour for the shuttle to fly down. What can we do in an hour?"

Trip looked at the bluff, it was almost dug out to the dimensions provided by Kuruya. Almost but not quite. "Let's flatten the depression, so the pilot doesn't have to deal with one side being higher than the other. We need to tell Travis it's higher than we wanted. It still gives him a little bit more room."

Shran talked into his mike again "We'll be ready, Captain, but we need to talk to your pilot, let him know what to expect."


	11. Chapter 11

Trip rematerialized on the disabled shuttle. He looked around the cabin, trying hard to avoid looking at the anti-grav stretcher in the middle. He nodded at Healer Telek, became aware of Phlox at his side.

"Go ahead, Commander" the doctor's tone was surprisingly gentle. But then, he was the one who had organized the encounter. Operation Recovery was going to start in fifteen minutes, and Phlox had advised Archer that it may be a good idea for Trip to come by now, just in case.

So Trip was coming to say good-bye. There was nothing else he could do on the surface or on Enterprise, or on the Vulcan ship even, otherwise he would have found some reason to avoid this altogether. Because if he didn't say goodbye, then she couldn't die, that seemed the logical inference. He choked inwardly at the word 'logical', mentally shook himself, he shouldn't get emotional, not now.

The healer was on the left side, and Trip went over to the right side of the bed. He had been prepared, or so he thought, but then why was he suddenly swallowing hard on a sob. She looked like hell, she looked gorgeous. "Hey there" he smiled through his tears. Was he crying? He brought his fingers to his face, looked at the humidity on them in puzzlement. He straightened up, tried to still his face, pulled down on his lower eyelids in an effort to stop. He was not crying. He could not be. And certainly not in front of that damn Vulcan healer. Somehow, eyes fluttering, he managed to regain control over his tear ducts. He looked down at T'Pol again, this time smiling without tears "Good morning" he whispered.

Her eyes had been closed. Her eyelids slowly opened and she seemed to look at him. He impulsively touched her hand, his fingers interlacing themselves with hers. He wasn't sure she recognized him.

"How are you doing?" Trip groaned inwardly. God, what a question to ask. What he wanted to say was that he loved her and everything would be all right and in a couple of days he would be at her side on Enterprise; what he wanted to sob was to please not leave him. But all these words seemed too small to express the depth of his feelings.

He saw the muscles tighten in her jaw. Phlox had warned him she couldn't talk but it didn't matter. He was just happy being there, looking at her.

"…rip…" her voice was faint. The Vulcan healer looked up in shocked surprise while Trip felt like celebrating inside. She had recognized him. And she had said his name.

"Good thing I have a short nickname" he quipped, grinning. He knew that if she had been well that would have gotten him at least one eyebrow, maybe two. The thought made him grin even more. "I'll be waiting for you on Enterprise." This was not good-bye. Not by a long shot.

Phlox came over "The MACO team is here." Trip nodded and went back to the transport area. "Thank you, Doctor." His place was on the surface of the asteroid, making sure everything was going okay.

xx

Archer stared intently at the main screen, where cameras in the disabled shuttle transmitted on a split screen, the other side of the screen reflecting what the sensors' view of the surface.

"Are all the teams in place?" he asked.

"Recovery team on disabled shuttle" Adomoutsis called back crisply over the waves. "Team 1 braced for airlock connection" that was Trip. Hess and Reed replied next. "Team 2 at the ready" "Team 3 standing by".

"Shran, are we good to go?"

"Recovery shuttlecraft is approaching the surface, Captain. Will let you know when I have visual. I have visual."

"Let's get this done, then."

On the right side of the screen, they saw the shuttlecraft piloted by Travis approach the disabled vessel, make an infinity-sign turn on itself before hovering in place, upside down, over the baffles bolted end to end on top of the disabled shuttle. Team 1 sprang into action, manually aligning the baffles with the airlock on the recovery shuttle, then latching the two together.

"Lock in"

"Airlock open!"

Archer couldn't tell who was speaking. On the left side of the screen, the MACO recovery team took hold of the anti-grav stretcher, Phlox and the Vulcan healer disappeared in the airlock and Adomoutsis seemed to be looking up the airlock at them. The recovery team gently grabbed the stretcher, gliding it ever so slowly until it was a couple of meters from the opening, then made an impossible number-eight rotation to bring it in line with the opening. The stretcher started to go up into the airlock, still in slow motion.

On the right side of the screen, the recovery shuttle's exhaust engines were whipping the dirt from the bluff into a frenzy. Ten minutes had passed already. The shuttle was visibly struggling against elemental forces of nature, but still it was hovering in place without moving.

"There's a lot of stress on the baffles" the eerie silence was broken by someone from Team 1.

"We just need another ten minutes" Trip's voice replied over the mike. Suddenly the image on the screen shook. Everyone held their breath.

"What's going on?!" Shran was screaming in the intercom.

"This is Hess, Commander" a voice replied. "Reporting for Team 2. One of the anchors gave way. No casualties this time. I repeat, no casualties. The other tether is still holding."

The stretcher seemed to have frozen halfway up the baffles. Archer gripped his armchair so tight his knuckles were turning white. "Archer to Ademoutsis – what's keeping you?" Why weren't they going faster?

Ademoutsis had been half-engaged into the airlock. He stepped back into the cabin. "It was the shaking. The doctors are working on her. We're waiting for them to give us the go-ahead."

Archer leaned back in his chair with a sigh and Hoshi turned around with a tense scowl. Trip had told him about how they already had an incident moving her from the floor. Didn't Phlox realize it was not a good idea for them to wait in the middle of transport? Couldn't they just get her in the shuttle with Travis and then fix things there?

Suddenly Ademoutsis' voice rang over the intercom again "The target has been handed off. They're bringing her inside the shuttle."

An eternity seemed to go by.

"Releasing the baffle" someone said. That sounded like Trip.

"Baffle released"

"Recovery shuttle, you are free to go" that was Shran's voice.

The shuttle glided a distance from the airlock, still upside down. Obviously, Travis had decided to let the natural forces of the planet work for him. The engines throttled up and the shuttle took a languid turn around the disabled shuttle, still upside down but slowly righting itself, so slowly that it didn't seem it was doing so until it was once again right side up. "Travis to Enterprise, we're coming in."

xx

The shuttlecraft hovered in the shuttle bay but didn't land. The side hatch flew open and the MACOs on board rushed to grab the anti-grav shelter that was slowly exiting, then took off at a rapid step down the corridor. The shuttle landed with a dull thud and Phlox and Telek stepped out then ran after the stretcher.

Archer waited until Travis got out and shook his hand.

"Thanks, Captain," the younger man said. Archer nodded and walked to the main bay intercom. "Hoshi, shipwide communication."

"Attention everyone, this is Captain Archer speaking. Congratulations to Team 1, 2, and 3, Recovery Teams 1 and 2, Travis and everyone who helped. We're going to be stationed here for a while longer while we clean up what we have on the surface. I want all hands to help, repeat, all hands to help with the cleanup." Archer let go of the intercom. Now that they had no time imperative and could drag everything back with the grappler if that's what they wanted to do, things would be much easier.

He knew it was way too early to go to sickbay, Phlox had indicated the surgery would take several hours, but he found his steps going there anyway. Trip was already there, as expected. He shrugged sheepishly when Archer walked in. Archer held his hand up "I couldn't think of a better place for you to be. Let me know when Phlox comes out."

He turned and left. He had a ship to run.

xx

Phlox looked at the monitor which showed, magnified twenty-times, the green blood clot, already huge in relation to the ciploid vein. Telek was deep in a mind-meld with T'Pol, helping to minimize brain activity and suppress instinctive responses.

Squinting for a better view, Phlox slowly and precisely passed the tip of the burner needle over a microscopic sliver of the clot. As he went, he cauterized the vein and was rewarded with the disappearance of the green blood oozing out of it.

Four hours later, the blood clot was gone, the vein fully cauterized, and Phlox nerves were shot. He pushed back from the viewer. Telek broke the meld and looked about ready to keel over.

"We are done" Phlox told him. The healer nodded and staggered a little. Phlox pushed a hypo against T'Pol's neck and her eyelids fluttered. They needed to wake her up and make sure there were no remaining issues before engaging her in a healing trance.

Phlox and Telek approached the biobed. "Commander, do you know who I am?" Phlox asked.

T'Pol's thoughts were muffled, the pain in her head had disappeared but lights and sounds were strange, coming to her distorted through a multi-dimensional tunnel. She closed her eyes, trying to quell the nauseous feeling that accompanied the distortions. She stared at the two figures standing in front of her, who were rapidly splitting from two to six and then back to two. The back and forth was dizzying. She saw one of them open his mouth, though no sound came forth.

The sound wave followed after a few seconds, horribly distorted, the sounds elongated into vibrating contraltos. They seemed to want to communicate but she didn't know what they were trying to say.

Telek turned to Phlox. "Perhaps you should say it in Vulcan. It will take a while for the brain functions to fully come back." The Denobulan doctor was a ball of tension, as if tensing up his muscles could have any effect on whether there was any brain damage. "Repeat after me," the Vulcan healer started enunciating slowly and distinctly, the words echoed by Phlox.

T'Pol saw the figures open their mouths again, waited for the delayed string of sounds that she figured would eventually reach her. This time the modulations were familiar, she could almost make some words, enough that she could tease out what they were trying to say. She looked at them in puzzlement, waiting until the figures stabilized enough that there were only two of them again.

She tried to speak back but found that things were not functioning normally. It was an effort to coordinate the thought in her head with the physical action of articulating it. Finally, with an immense effort, a word broke through.

"…Phlox…" Why did he want to know if she knew him? It was most illogical, considering he had been her doctor for over five years.

Phlox was all smiles "Healer Telek is going to help you get in a healing trance. When you wake up, all of this will be a memory." His smile accentuated to its largest width and he stepped aside to let Telek come closer, closing the privacy curtains behind him. A few minutes later, Telek came out, nodding. "She is in a deep healing trance. I will stay aboard until she wakes up."

Phlox had not realized the Vulcan planned to spend the time on board. "Why, Healer Telek, I am sure you can go back to your ship. If T'Pol wakes up, I have interned on Vulcan and am familiar with the classic method to bring her out of a trance."

Telek raised an eyebrow at him "You propose to wake the victim of a head trauma by striking them across the head?"

Phlox's eyes widened "Oh well, when you put it like that. Hmm, that would not be a very good idea, would it?" Suddenly a smile returned to his features. "How long should we expect the healing trance to last?"

"Given that this was a substantial and traumatic injury, I would expect to be here two or three days." Telek responded.

Phlox smiled widened. "Say", he intoned as he proceeded out of sickbay, Telek falling into step beside him, "I could use some help recalibrating our emergency mediscanners."

xx

T'Pol opened her eyes and looked at Shran for several seconds.

"Glad to see you're better." He smiled at her.

"You..saved ..my..life" Her speech was still slightly slower than normal. But Phlox had said she would fully recover.

"I certainly did." Shran stood even straighter. "You owe me."

An eyebrow raised "It..is..illogical-"

Shran put his hand up, staving off any rejoinder. "You owe me, that's all there is to it." She glared at him and he smiled at her, before turning on his heel and leaving, grinning like the cat that got the canary. A Vulcan owing an Andorian. That must be a first.

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THE END

 _Oops, I forgot the initial declaration about Paramount and intellectual property rights etc. So here goes._

 _Hope you enjoyed the story,_

 _A-_


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